"The arroyo looks dry but there's water inside the bright-lipped cholla and yellow cactus, the belly of a fleeing rabbit, and the snake's bright stripes of pale on black crossing the junction of the Camino Real and the Armijo route where I once cradled a child's twisted ankle and carried him back along the brush to the parked school bus."
"On the silver road, I am carrying silver. My son turns thirteen in October. Droplets patter behind my steps, awakening the environment almost instantaneously. Turquoise, obsidian, salt, and feather in the blush of light that warms the bellies of the clouds across the wide but intricate skyline. Ladling stew into bowls, I drip three deep red stains across the bridge of my left shoe. The white column of bone I spoon from the broth mirrors a spine of ancient volcanic ash in the desert."
An arroyo appears dry while water hides within cholla, a rabbit's belly, and a snake's pale-on-black stripes near the Camino Real and Armijo route. A remembered moment involves cradling a child's twisted ankle and carrying him to a parked school bus while police searched for those who cut the silver leg from Oñate's statue. A map names the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro as a royal road, and idioms about right and road sit beside the note that Oñate ordered the severing of feet. Clouds, cactus blooms, domestic stew, stains on a shoe, mineral colors, and volcanic imagery populate the scene alongside a son's impending thirteenth birthday.
#desert-landscape #camino-real-de-tierra-adentro #ontildeate-and-colonial-violence #memory-and-family
Read at High Country News
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