Shadows Roll In

Up the green foothills

the South wind pushes the clouds

in a shadow tide. 

On a windy autumn afternoon, masses of clouds roll across the Valley, darkening the plains and flooding the roads with shadows. The shadow wave moves over the Blanca Massif; the clouds will hover over the peaks all night and leave a dusting of snow by morning. 

I watch the wave of darkness roll towards me as I jog down the road. I wait for the moment when the wave will overtake me the way I used to wait for the waves of the Pacific to fill my mouth and nostrils with salt and the taste of seaweed when I was a little girl. 

The months go by quickly. It's already November. The little pile of firewood that was left from last winter is already dwindling; we've started lighting up the wood stove at night. The clouds roll fast. The shadows come in. I walk and jog and stretch to keep my body as straight and supple as I can, but at times I already feel the pull of the earth below my feet. 

Autumn Weeds

Dry weed bracts glitter

distracting the downturned eye; 

October sunrise. 

Gravel

Sifting damp gravel

over a red wheelbarrow

I smell last week's rain. 

This pile of gravel is our latest Sisyphean project; we have to sift through it to remove the dirt. I like big, apparently insurmountable projects like this. I spent over an hour shoveling and sifting today, burying my fingers in the damp soil as I spread the stones across the sieve that Eric made. He constructed the sieve by nailing a piece of mesh to an antique window frame. We sift the dirt out into the wheelbarrow, then haul the soil over to a ridge we're creating to defend our struggling flowerbed against rabbits. The gravel will fill the trenches that will form the foundation of the strawbale addition to the house. The addition is intended to be a mudroom, but it will also provide extra insulation against the winter wind.

I can't believe winter is on the way already. The sooner we fill up the trenches and finish the addition, the warmer we'll be when the winter winds start in earnest.

Sublimation

The coyotes glide

below the dry chamiso --

my forgotten fears. 

Clouds without Rain

Four or five raindrops.

Thunderheads darken the mountain,

hover . . . and move on.

One Sunflower

Like a tiny hand

a single flower's shadow

spreads across the dust. 

Empty House

Abandoned A-frame,

between your shattered rafters

winged ghosts come to rest. 

This is one of the many empty dwellings here on Blanca Flats. "It's always the women who want to leave," our real estate agent told us when we bought our own A-frame about two miles from this one. "They miss their families; they miss the shops." This house was built for a family who lived here for awhile before the wife declared that she couldn't take the isolation. Behind the house is an old moving van that yawns open, as if the family stopped in the very process of moving their belongings into the house. Doves and pigeons have taken up residence in the van and in the house. If you walk around the property, which I've done before, the house seems to explode in an agitated whir of wings.