Owning It All
for Bill Kittredge
You write that your grandfather
built the biggest ranch west of
the Continental Divide, overgrazing
and chemical farming destroying
the Oregon land, your childhood
tale of killing dozens of rattlesnakes
in their den sending me back to
Cottonwood Springs where the largest
rattler of my life sunned on a rock
as I climbed the canyon, trying to
reach water before it struck, men on
my father’s side driving cattle from
northern New Mexico to El Paso
where they eventually married into
my mother’s side of Mexicans fleeing
the revolution and losing property
to Pancho Villa, starving on their
journey to this side of poverty.
Who owns the river and the currents
on either side of writing our stories,
myths where everyone dies hating
the land but loving the earth?
When you embraced as fathers and sons,
other men approached fields and crops,
thousands of acres worked by dark and
calloused hands.
On William Stafford’s 100th Birthday, January 17th, 2014
What survives is a voice in the wilderness where few go to listen to the silence. Imagine they mark the highway out of there with light, a thought, and a set of paws in the snow. A secret holds the forest in hand, stretching across the desert where the rescued hide in sadness. What is hidden is revealed by the man who insists on leaving at dawn before God misses the morning star. Imagine a voice calling, “You are home.” Imagine the snow never falling on the dead, their gravestones left to the imagination that heard the owl call, saw the boy, at last, and found the wind. When the boy grew into a man and knelt down one day, it wasn’t to pray, but to get closer to the earth.
Searching for the Blue Mountains
I have seen the black rocks
beyond the river, the haze of memory
trying to lift aside to reveal blue peaks
no one can climb because they don’t wait,
Evergreen forests fooled into covering
ground where I have never been.
When the Apaches rode into the Gila,
I was a face on the boulders sharing
sunlight in the quiet circle of horses.
Generations later, the blue mountains
overshadow everything I believe.
I make it to the river rushing out of
the cliffs, blue mountains with a history
as their canyons welcome me by filling
the space of blue shadows and blue light,
blue fields washed in snow under the trees
of welcome that reflect in blue.
La Frontera
Someone found the writings of the madman.
In his text, you are standing under the trees.
A mighty figure is seated there, covered in leaves.
He waits there without speaking because
his language will be crushed by cathedrals.
Hernan Cortez had 29 horses killed by the Aztecs.
On the other side of the house
where you grew up, they uncovered
an ancient burial site and built a freeway.
Enter quietly because white hair is outlawed.
The Lone Ranger is the earliest image
you recall of childhood television.
There is also religion, a canister, and
an only child crying in the street.
When Basho stood at the gates of
the emperor, two frogs leaped out
of his robe and entered first.
The narrative of immigration control
integrates and alienates, the magnolia
turning yellow as autumn rests in
the branches that shade the closed book,
its cover open to paradise, the shadow
of the leaf covered figure fertilizing
the magnolia before it was time to grieve.
On the other side of the bridge you crossed,
was a child with no legs, begging for coins.
The sky is constellated by voyages like this.
When you arrived at the last church
you ever entered, everyone was kneeling
and no one looked up.
•••
Ray Gonzalez is the author of sixteen books of poetry, including Beautiful Wall (BOA Editions, 2016 Minnesota Book Award) and the forthcoming Feel Puma (University of New Mexico Press, 2020). He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.