EL CERRO DE CORAZON

We drove the road of long mesas
through the red clumps of hills,
rocks stacked like tits beneath a washed out sky,
down through the cuts of the Santa Rosa
and the ox blood slick rock slabs of the Morrison, 
to where Ogallala caliche gave way to Dakota sandstone
crowning the Canadian Escarpment, 
El Estacado from Trementina to Sabinoso.

We stopped at the shrine and offered tobacco 
to Our Lady of Guadalupe,
touched the four hems of her skirt, 
kissed her hands and feet, 
and in the sheltered lee of juniper and chamisa 
I bowed to your feather dalea, 
sucked the meat from your Calamatas,
split open your soaked and swollen almonds, 
and peeling flesh from your avocado wedges
left a trail of teeth in the texture of your skin.

Then we rose up El Cerro de Corazon 
of the long trees and dry falls and burro trails, 
and your black curls against the blue zenith 
and your skin scent dusty and mingled
with ponderosa pitch and the panting of rock lizards,
and breaking through the Heart, 
we heard the valves of the sky snap open.

The Altiplano pulled us by our hair 
to the top of world and we stretched 
naked across smoked buckskin 
pinned to the edges of the sky. 
And after we called in the winds 
and beat our drums with bison hooves,
with hearts splayed open to every pulse
and rumble of blood and the black thump
of thunder off the Sangre de Cristos,
we said here is where
we will build our house.


© 2003 by Richard W. Todd

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