Mountains & Homestead, Taos
When you travel, you often see the extremes of a locale, especially if you are traveling as a tourist. As a result, you see the most interesting location, the most historic, the best view or lookout, the newest restaurant, the most famous architecture.
When I think of Taos, I think of art. Modern sculpture with a Western flair. Jewelers working in silver, setting tiny pieces of polished stone into hand-crafted, needle-size settings. Weaving, especially large scale wall hangings in colors dyed to match mountain and desert.
So what goes through your mind when you travel? Do you imagine yourself in another time, place, lifestyle? Perhaps in a place like the historic areas of Taos, New Mexico, as this poem suggests? Yet, in the end, most of us return home to something a little more mundane, a little less extreme.
Mountains & Homestead, Taos
A lovely one-room adobe starter home,
with two squared openings—
one a window, one a door—
exhibiting the original dirt floor
and an authentic barrel set outside,
still good for washing and for rain.
A pile of wood, enough for one summer’s nights,
and here, the remains of corn
and beans gone wild,
proof a garden can be raised
among the far open, stubbled land
creeping into the distance on three sides.
And wouldn’t it be nice if we had a dog,
perhaps even a child
to converse with the mountains every afternoon
by way of shadows sent like messages,
pale copies of their craggy selves.
But no, not here, this isn’t
the kind of place we’d ever really live.
Too sentimental, too picturesque—
the mountain’s grays and purples,
the adobe’s browns, now bleached near-white.
Leave the rain barrel
to make our apologies—
its one big eye shining after a storm,
and wavering a little
as it reflects the mountains’ rutted faces.
If you enjoyed Mountains & Homestead, Taos
You can read more of my work on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print. This week’s poem also appears in that collection.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page. (Featured image photo by Larry Costales on Unsplash, Rain Barrel by mars87 on Pixabay.)
Have a great week, and look for another poem next Monday.