The sky was blue on April 16 at one minute before noon . It was to be my debut onto Avenue Magdalena , one street over from Clover Drive , the pale blue singing me into life , a life we are all born to die , the blue pushing me through onto earths keyboard , the blue stealing my heart , the blue separating the land and the sea by only a membrane . I’ve been watching , always watching , looking into a hued haze of violet swirling my days in New Mexico now , vast this country , nostalgic , old , fragile , faint with dark blue veins connecting canyons , cottonwood , cattle , antelope , crevices , plateau , juniper , tumbleweed and the breath of sage sighing like dust clouds , moving ghosts over dry land , land the color of my body . Nothing is hidden here , here where melodies of wind bring forth imagination as if tears dropping from blue , drop compassion upon these hills of ivory skulls and bones .
I have been alive for sixty-five years today , today with the blue sky a circle . Those holes blue , drawn by the clouds becoming navels , the dark purple of the night are my east and west , the rising and falling of my nipples erect and exposed , the north and the south are my womb and stomach swallowed by the moon . I wish I could have another baby . I wish I could dance the flamingo . I wish I could hold onto my mother once more or play the accordion ( the green one I always write about ) or live at an ashram or walk the Camino de Santiago or fly like birds do . But I am a ” poem painter “. I was born in the bosom of Mother Earth , in a place beyond the horizon , a place whose residents have an inclination for precipitating miracles , a place under the bright blue sky of 1951 . Who stole my heart ? I’m always looking so far for it . I wish I could have back the round black mole that was once burned off my cheek bone . It came with me , an onyx from somewhere before , the day the sky was blue .
Photos by D. Cook Photography
