Río Grande
for Lori
In New Mexico,
in spring, our river was
sparkling clear and rushing.
In other seasons, our wide, grand,
river was muddy-red and slow-flowing,
but always feeding winding acequias,
giving us ribbons of green in the desert.
She was the source of every good thing.
She gave us clay
to craft strong pots and bowls,
and chiles, green and red, making us
the only state in the nation
with an official question.
We grew three sisters—squash, corn, beans,
and also onions, tomatoes, pumpkin, and watermelon
so good it made hot summer lives worth living.
We fished for blue channel catfish,
black crappie, New Mexico native
cutthroat trout, and caught crawdads
near her banks. (More trouble than
they were worth, I thought.)
We swam and played, skipped rocks, danced,
sang, built tiny adobe villages in the mud,
and prayed out loud for rain when she was low.
It was a naturalist child’s dream,
wandering near the river, watching life
all around us.
In the blue, blue sky soared eagles, golden and bald.
We listened to the cries of owls,
great-horned, screech, barn,
burrowing,
and Mexican Spotted.
Near our naked feet, snakes startled us, moving silently.
Hog-nosed, rattle, painted desert glossy,
and fast, unidentified slitherers of all kinds.
In our rambles we watched horned toads,
salamanders, box turtles,
snapping turtles (we have painful memories),
and one red-eared slider.
On the ground were alarming
jumping spiders, masses of tiny red velvets,
huge black bristling tarantulas, brown recluse,
wolf, and widows—an arachnophobe’s nightmare.
Two kinds of scorpions occasionally
climbed into our shoes at night.
One tiny and dangerous,
and a larger, paler, less worrisome one,
but both, the personification of evil
with their curled-back stingers just waiting to strike.
We followed centipedes and ants, red, black and sugar,
and beetles trundling and stumbling in red soil.
In the air around us flew and flickered moths,
wasps and bees, gossamer-winged butterflies,
swallowtails of various fluttering colors,
white, sulphur, and brush-footed butterflies,
including occasional monarchs.
Finches, flickers, sparrows and doves rustled and twittered,
along with hummingbirds and their whirring,
dive-bombing wings.
Prairie falcon, peregrine falcon, turkey vultures,
kestrel, goshawk, red-tailed hawk,
Swainson’s hawk, and Harris’s hawk
fed on nearby prairie dogs, mice,
rabbits, ground squirrels, and rats,
and once we saw a huge Ferruginous hawk
flying away with a rattlesnake in its beak,
just like the flag of Mexico.
Although almost never seen,
we knew we had coyote neighbors,
by the noisy parties they held howling in the dark.
One day, we crossed a bobcat’s path and we stopped,
not breathing,
and stared at her,
and she stopped,
and stared at us,
yellow-eyed,
motionless,
silent,
for a full minute,
that seemed like a day,
then she quietly padded away.
Published in Trickster Literary Journal 2024
