After the ranch buildings burned down
And ranching was abandoned, the palms
Around the stone irrigation ditch grew into it,
Forcing the spring water out over the ground.
Thick groves of them, gigantic palms, loom
Over the ruined ditch now, although
The springs have been re-channeled
And reclaimed for conservation purposes,
And archaeologists have practiced in the ditch.
Bits of cheap china and old tins turned up.
Taken as a whole, here’s the valley’s human
Story (and are there any other kinds?) so far:
Although Clovis points have been found north
Of the valley, the earliest horizon seen here
Was nine thousand years ago, the Archaic.
Humans, in other words, got to this place late.
Then a few thousand years of mostly the same,
Then the borrowings or intrusions from the south,
From the coast, beans, corns, squash, pottery,
Bows and arrows, advanced basketry techniques,
Eventually a few centuries of full-on Puebloan,
And then those gone in the centuries of drought.
Historically, Paiutes, presumably moving in
From California after the Puebloans, but too long
Ago to have a cultural memory of their conquest,
If it was a conquest, mixing low-intensity
Agriculture with hunting by when the Jesuits
First troubled them. Another century or so,
And then the usual western. Outlaws, Mormons,
Ranchers, developers, conservationists. Today,
A quiet place, channeled water burbling along
The edge of the stands of massive palms,
Guides for birders at the trailhead parking lot.
This tomorrow having been as unimaginable
To the outlaws and the Muddy Mission Mormons
As they were to the first Paiutes, the Paiutes
To the Puebloans, the Puebloans with their corn
And adobe to the mammoth hunters, the mammothAnd ranching was abandoned, the palms
Around the stone irrigation ditch grew into it,
Forcing the spring water out over the ground.
Thick groves of them, gigantic palms, loom
Over the ruined ditch now, although
The springs have been re-channeled
And reclaimed for conservation purposes,
And archaeologists have practiced in the ditch.
Bits of cheap china and old tins turned up.
Taken as a whole, here’s the valley’s human
Story (and are there any other kinds?) so far:
Although Clovis points have been found north
Of the valley, the earliest horizon seen here
Was nine thousand years ago, the Archaic.
Humans, in other words, got to this place late.
Then a few thousand years of mostly the same,
Then the borrowings or intrusions from the south,
From the coast, beans, corns, squash, pottery,
Bows and arrows, advanced basketry techniques,
Eventually a few centuries of full-on Puebloan,
And then those gone in the centuries of drought.
Historically, Paiutes, presumably moving in
From California after the Puebloans, but too long
Ago to have a cultural memory of their conquest,
If it was a conquest, mixing low-intensity
Agriculture with hunting by when the Jesuits
First troubled them. Another century or so,
And then the usual western. Outlaws, Mormons,
Ranchers, developers, conservationists. Today,
A quiet place, channeled water burbling along
The edge of the stands of massive palms,
Guides for birders at the trailhead parking lot.
This tomorrow having been as unimaginable
To the outlaws and the Muddy Mission Mormons
As they were to the first Paiutes, the Paiutes
To the Puebloans, the Puebloans with their corn
Hunters to the mammoths, we should expect
The tomorrows beyond us to be equally unimaginable,
However obsessed we are with dreaming them up.
Bit of wind shifting the fronds, now, nothing else.
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