Poem in New Mexico Mercury

"Going Gone" - New Mexico Mercury
 
Wrote it last summer, on a soft day. I was newly returned to New Mexico, wondering what would become of me and so, I drove and drove and then I remembered why the return had felt like a homecoming. The first version of the poem I wrote was longer -  though I think the shorter works better. Here is the long version - 

See part 1 at the New Mexico Mercury

part 2 goes:

It was good to up and go 
I was feeling down and dusty 
full of longing wearied by
what I knew to be true
Saint Francis leads to Sawmill
the café is open till 8
pride goes before a fall
like that.

It was good to up and go
past Pojoaque to a road
unknown to me
and the shock of such
beauty - after turning 
through trees - the sudden wild 
lands - mesas, hills, hoodoos
folds and swells and flat tops 
shades of pastel pink 
edged with the unmistakable black 
triangles of the Sangre de Cristos 

What to do with such feeling
like sky
seeming solid
seeming blue
but not

A telephone pole at the top of a
mountain rose full of electric 
currents running across hills 
that are anything but sedentary

A man in a hat once pulled over as I did, 
took off his hat, leaned across and kissed me 
A girl and I drove up this way once
when I didn’t know this place was home 

© 2013 Shebana Coelho