where hearts belong

She nursed a wild scheme
with dreams of becoming
a flower out of wild seed
though replanted
around asphalt and steel
her heart always belonged
to the green fields
their rows endless
with crops to feed
the rich and the needy
or to the desert of Shiprock and
Table Mesa with its stark lushness of rabbit brush,
sage, wild carrot, greenthread tea and
cochineal bugs to color the fine wool
woven into time machine rugs holding
onto the same wind that etches lives
into the sides of the Sandia mountains and
when rain clouds finally come to bless the
stamped red earth, faithful servant of the sun,
drops are big and kick up the dust
thrusting itself up towards turquoise sky
to drink greedily in the rich wetness
while dreaming of the great lakes
before they became poison and muddy
flash flooding is sometimes welcome
when memory treads water in dark lagoons
where loons sing late into the night of the
impending doom in a dark, void
of moon’s smiling face
it is a race to see who can reach the ocean first
her heart or the wind singing in answer to the loon
that life is a parade and all the floats are surely headed
in the same direction - to the end of the line - but it’s just
a matter of time and getting there is so delightful if you
dance and let the world’s problems in,
but let those you can’t resolve roll over you
like water off a ducks back and yes, that may be
quack psychology - but it has got to be that way -
in the life of flowers and fleeting dreams



©Odilia Galván Rodríguez, 2009

Tule Fog Dreams

you walk out into a hazy dream
Tule fog thick but nothing sticks to you,
nothing stops a determined walk of kings,
warriors, or gunslingers that lead
with their left foot stepping sure
always – ever onward to victory -
that’s you in the dream.
you are in your late twenties
longish raven hair, wavy but not unruly
your features are sharp and commanding
as if you are better than everyone else
but later I find out that is not you,
not who you really are, just
how you appear to others -
less sure of themselves.
you are a young man but not a kid
you’ve already seen plenty of action
in your years on the planet and don’t
plan on taking any shit from anyone.
yet, you have those eyes that let out
a bright kindness in the way they shine
especially for the very young, the elderly and
for the women you love.

you walk out of a haze into a dream
at first you don’t recognize me
(I don’t recognize me)
talking to a group of men you tower over
you continue eyeing me
standing on the edge of the scene
I look out of place, there are only men present
I am new to this here that stands in the middle
of nowhere wrapped in swirling fog
almost thick as cotton batting
yet my line of vision to you is not obscured
it’s as though you SEE into me,
every minute of me - since I first
began to tick in eternity,
since the first spark of breath
that leaps my spirit into flesh and
that recognition scares and shakes me
to my very center because
even I don’t know me – that well...

it is Fall and the wind is cruel
it turns up the soil that comes up
off the fields and mingles with the rain
to come down in dirty sheets, the
roads become mud soup in places.
by then, we are behind locked doors
your hands looking at my body
tracing every line ever written
you whisper incantations
sealing me into you forever and I,
thinking forever was right then, let you.
that is how never forgetting starts
how it penetrates bone and heart
how we get tied up tight to people
who’ve we’ve always known, have
always been bound to in other lives,
with sight and seeing, with whispers
and incantations and dreams
on rainy nights.


©Odilia Galván Rodríguez, 2009
The Yucatan Peninsula