I
As I walk through la plaza vieja,
Albuquerque, New Mexico,
I remember all the plazas
I’ve seen in Mexico and Spain.
This time I stroll back
through the ephemeral light
of history bent by time,
and cross busy Lomas,
New York Avenue
as it was called back then.
It was a dirt road. Buried
voices push up through earth,
pavement, and concrete.
The ghosts of homes
linger in the silent walls
of shops and restaurants
where tourists enjoy
a sense of the distant past.
On the back streets
you will still find old timers
who live and work here.
Voices rise through fissures
of time. Grandma’s voice
mixes with the chatter
of her lady friends
as they smoke Bull Durham
rolled in Riz-la cigarette paper
and sip a very sweet wine.
Next come the voices
of San Felipe de Neri School,
the former courthouse
and jail, carved out of stone,
still looking ominous
in mid-twentieth century,
as I remember it.
School boys egged me on,
as I was the youngest.
“Go ahead, do it.”
“If you are a Sister,”
I asked Sister Joseph,
“where is your brother?”
The boys sniggered,
the girls smiled shyly.
I had my first
of many spankings.
Voices so far away,
so near, in the shifting
ambiguities of time,
accompany me through
a ghostly old town.
II
As I cross Church Street,
I wonder: What has become
of the scattered sound waves
sung by the cave dwellers
in the Sandia Mountains?
Where are the rooftop cries
of the pueblos once here
in the mid Rio Grande valley?
I have no use for the sweet lies
we drug ourselves with
to be able to stand the present.
Indigenous people were quite well,
thank you, before Spaniards
and other Europeans came.
Colonizers on the move
made dust everywhere.
Later, more Westerners
came and upset the balance,
ancient and honored, between
humans and wilderness
that once held in these lands.
I remember the nuns in black,
always black. The priests,
little dictators arriving fresh
from Franco’s Spain. The Irish
Jesuit, ready to insult you
with no provocation needed.
I remember how we were forced
to pray, down on our knees,
to thank God for Franco’s
victory over the “Reds” in Spain.
Then there was Father Goni.
Jesuit, pro-Franco, yet a jewel
of friendship and compassion
for the poor, for my family.
He took us on picnics
every Sunday to the Sandias,
entertained us with stories
about parishes he had served.
I can still hear his laughter.
I sense a link from quark
to atom to light years of longing
for the rhythms of time
that bind this planet,
everything that is,
in this enigmatic dance turning
forever among the galaxies.
We might as well enjoy it.
July 07, 2013