Camposantos

all we have is our hands and a hole in god’s earth
                                                                       -federico garcia lorca
                       
           
                                                                            now
there is no one left to swaddle the acequias
if brown arms could reach out of this earth
                                                        they would

women in raven mantillas gather at noon
near the cusp of a chapel of heat-dried brick

                             above them the sun is a bowl
of mid-summer plums, blood-cerise turning
to purple, plucked from the sangre de cristos

amidst coyote fences and cast-iron railings,
locked cerquitas, wired once in old wicker,
each wife-mother caresses a marker  wood

stakes born in stream bottom or splash-stone,
lip-reads words as murió el dia or memoria

kisses her crown of thorns, a rose, a heart
star, dove  pray for them madrecita maria
we come to honor what has been  
                                        yet cannot be again

under day-star-of-noon, laden with wild lilies,
we plant our people’s proud history  land  sky

farm   sisters of tecolote, mora, taos   we bless
these holy fields basking in the pueblos’ thrall
                                                              
among these gardens of the dead    luminescent
graves reflect lightning-on-silver slivers of God.

(Manzanita Quarterly, Winter, 2002)