Mimi's Solution

Anasazi relics placed in morning stillness
under a shaded New Mexican sun,
Mimi gazes over pinion pines and slickrock hoodoos.
Above Rio Puerco's entrenched meander,
hawks float lazily along a layered cliff,
breezes pushing them over fenced lands.
The skeletal remains of her yurt
frame sagebrushed sandswells.

Whistling softly, she alerts a field mouse
wondering if it's her old friend,
whose nightly incursions on lightning feet
transgressed yurt walls.
Politely taking crumbs, too wily for traps,
his circling wariness became grudging respect.

She sees regular trespassers on Anglo land,
renegade spanish cowboys who travel
the old roads across Anglo property,
validating themselves rightful owners of the Piedra Lumbre.
Their cattle, soft-eyed and single file,
seem entitled anywhere.

The yellowed yurt frames an old reflection:
the homeowners of "Las Animas de Abiquiu"
proclaimed property values paramount;
the yurt could no longer stand,
must be replaced by a thickwalled hacienda,
Santa Fe style, required by the covenants.

Now from a nearby cottage,
she moves nomadically,
coming and going politely,
transgressing borders
like the hawks and mouse,
and the Spanish.

---
for Mimi H.

words: Stephen Maurer, Washington.
& more, here: Anasazi (poem#7)