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