Black and White
All day I gawked and awed,
tracing the Guadalupe Mountains from the horizon
as one might cut along a paper’s perforation,
embarrassing myself before the sun and vultures,
and not quite content to look
yet too cowardly to touch and cry.
Later, the tin and dust motel
showed some black and white cowboy film
and I wondered if this is how the soul moves.
Indifferent to the vast colors, beauties,
rattlers and hungers and savageries,
a sole rider kept to his purpose
as if one with everything he failed to see,
as if he did not need to see
and simply was.
And other lone horsemen wandered by, unhesitant,
none pausing, gawking, or scribbling notes
(they did not need to remember).
At times a slaying, at times a silent passing.
It made no difference to hills, horses, men.
One set of eyes could capture an entire landscape,
reaching so far beyond night
it almost touched morning again.
-published by San Pedro River Review and in my chapbook A Pure River
