At the Lawrence Ranch
San Cristobal, New Mexico
Inside the tulle of curtain
table with battered typewriter
boiled by—
someone—as
revenge (story’s apocryphal)
Outside the tumble of cord
over stacked
wood and
tumult of
untrammeled branch with
an arc above
the peeling bark
Sturdy snow
pearling up on
mountain
cliff
We have climbed the dirt road
past piñon, blue sage, to the old pine
“the tree-trunk there like a guardian
angel”—genus Seriphidium—
Nowhere’s
the name of the inscrutable
maker
Marker
of plumed
and ribald solitude wherein
“close quarters tempers flared” 