My boots on red rocks and the slightest green
in the new Spanish oaks. Blooming crimson cactus.
Birds are out, and odd red beetles I've not seen before.
A grasshopper blunders smack into my chest
too startled to realize it was my walking
that woke him.
Beneath this ridge the old fort blares
recordings of those tired soldier days, a bugle
tinny on the spring wind.
They murdered very efficiently from that place once--
hounding the Apache down to shadows, stealing
all the water from the Comanche. Heartless
righteous God-fearing soldiers all. Doing right by
Jesus and the Generals, I guess.
I rested on a red rock ledge above it,
wedged between a triangle of cerulean sky
and the humming space under my dangling feet.
In that place I knew you yet—
you were here too long to be gone.
Sleep if you can. The canyon has
outlasted them. And you, I hope
have watered your red horses
at the everlasting spring.
