Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
CYNTHIA HOGUE

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”  end