Coyote, New Mexico, 30 September 2017

I hadn't seen the last of them, those
Extraordinary roadside memorials, tragically
Numerous and extravagantly maintained,
All individualized, most colorful, many
Half buried in pots of fresh flowers.
The contents of an entire village cemetery
Were scattered across the roads of northern
New Mexico, I thought as I left Taos for Page
And on back to Zion. In Montana, discreet
Signs let the traveler know a white cross
Represented a traffic death at that location,
And throughout the state identical, standard,
Modest white crosses on steel supports
Marked the points of death. If two deaths,
Then two identical crosses, twins, sprouted
From a single metal post. Otherwise, nothing
Else identified the events commemorated.
But here, just two states away, everything
To do with roadside grieving had become
Wondrously effortful and personal.
In Coyote, less than two miles apart, two
Memorials on the same side of the road
Testified. The easternmost featured fully
Seven pots of living flowers, pink, white,
And yellow, well-watered, set on white
Gravel and bordered like a small garden
With a low wall of stones, under an unusual
Black cross, the upright barely taller
Than the cross bar was wide, purple letters
Festooning the structure with the name
And dates of the deceased. Papers pinned
To the top of the cross looked like letters
Or crumpled, multiple versions of INRI.
To the west, the next memorial went further.
The stone wall had been cemented and was
The exact size and shape of a man's coffin.
Flowers were planted to grow in it, pink,
Yellow, purple, and white, with a heart-shape
Bouquet of red roses festooning the head
Of the cross, while, this time, white stones
Ranged round outside of the coffin planter,
With a second, plain white cross at the foot.
What were the relatives of the deceased
Intending to convey by building that planter
Shaped like a coffin, all of good flagstone,
And filling it with repeated pots of flowers?
Humans were burying defleshed ancestors
Under the floorboards and in house walls
For at least as long as there were sedentary
Precedents, but what could be the point
Of a secondary memorial at the very spot
Of death, one not including body or ashes?
These garlanded cenotaphs, these warnings
To everyone else on the road that death
Was just a bit further down that same road,
Again and again, they were performing
Mysteries. Here lies nothing of the persons
Who died, except a proof that they were not
Forgotten. I worshipped, respectively, cap
In hand, each madness, and then I drove on,
Counting more crosses, considering mine.

D.H. Lawrence Memorial, New Mexico, 29 September 2017

Probably, Frieda mixed his ashes in cement
She used for the phoenix altar in the chapel.
A couple of decades later, she was buried
Full-length before the white chapel's door.
The whole concatenation of revenants stood
Now at the top of a zig-zagging sidewalk
Through the cedars above the ranch house,
Twenty-five hundred meters, give or take,
Above sea level, looking west over slopes
That fell swiftly to scrublands and the gorge
Of El Rio Grande del Norte. How in the hell
Could the thin air have been thought to help
His consumption? I stared at the phoenix,
His totem, wishing the ashes to reassemble
And the man to step out of the crumbling
Cement, looking uncertain and bemused.
We're good at disintegration and brilliant
At faded monuments, but we're impossible
When it comes to resurrection, we are.

Enchanted Circle, New Mexico, 28 September 2017

After a few days, the superabundance 

Of gawdy roadside crosses and dour

Hitchikers in heavy, dull clothing began 

To wear me down, as if I weren't a stub

Of battered body already, badly stumbling.

After a tour of the touted Enchanted Circle

Scenic loop north of Taos, buttery aspens,

Dark spruce, a few small ski towns, lakes,

Three-thousand meter mountain passes,

Rain clouds raising and lowering scrims,

I retreated to my rented room in a converted

Hacienda, pulled the blinds, lit the candles.

One cross had been coated in orange chiles

And another had floral hoops and archways.

The actual cemeteries were concentrations

Of the same, lacking the great white Jesus

Statues of rural cemeteries in Quebec, but

Making up for it in extravagant colors, as if

A thousand bower birds had lost their minds.

Grief. We only haunt ourselves, and the end

Of our haunting is when we leave the colors

And the monuments, and the weary, hanging

Heads of hitchhikers, the names, the signs,

The stories behind. In the last gallery 

Of the Millicent Rogers museum, a copy

Of a letter she wrote to her youngest son

Days before she died hung on the wall.

"And I thought if I stretched out my hands

They would be Earth and green would grow

From me. And I knew that there was no 

Reason to be lonely that one was everything,

And Death was as easy as the rising sun

And as calm and natural. . . so that Being

Part of the Earth one was never alone."

Hlauuma, New Mexico, 27 September 2017

This did not happen: I did not photograph,
Much less climb into the sacred kivas,
Still in daily use, that I could see behind
The sawhorse with the No Trespassing sign.
I did not wade into the Red Willow Creek.
I did not meet a stranger who engaged me
In long and earnest conversation, although
Perhaps I said a few polite hellos and thanks,
Maybe I complimented a mother on her baby
And discussed the differing scents of sage
And various kinds of cedar with an elder.
I did not find myself out of the clutches
Of the likely, of the things that happened.
I may have moved around a bit and taken
A few pictures and eaten a piece of frybread,
But I did not escape into another dimension
Although I did know exactly why: I existed.
My existence was the bar to my release.
I watched the clouds gather over the peaks,
But I did not have a vision of any other
World, smudged with sage, sacred, me in it.

Carson National Forest, New Mexico, 26 September 2017

Body kept count of the roadside crosses
For a while, lonely on the long road, lonely
And prone to thinking about the last moment
Of anyone's life, the thought, perhaps, this
Is my last thought, no wait, this is, no.
No matter how many thousands of times,
Tens of thousands by now, body had drifted
Back to sleep, obliterating self and mind,
No matter how obvious it was in retrospect
Each time that awareness couldn't be there
For anyone to remember later what it was
Like to stop existing, even temporarily, no,
Body could not stop pushing thoughts close
To that event horizon from which no return.
At one point, high in a forest on approach
To Taos, the car drifted by a white cross
With a spray of small American flags
And several plastic roses, a name and dates
Inked in gothic lettering large enough to read
From the road's other side: Dale Cooley
5/10/63-5/22/09. Where were you, if you
Were, on either of those dates? On the latter,
Dale died in a traffic accident in the woods
At the age of just barely forty-six. I thought
About Dale the rest of the road to Taos,
How he died, how'd he die? I almost forgot
To mention that there was a much smaller,
Brown cross, without lettering or decoration
Right beside Dale's. The other victim? Child?
An earlier or later accident at the same spot,
As near to nowhere as paved roads get?
Maybe even another cross for Dale, placed
By someone wanting to mourn separately,
Without raising a fuss, a lover, an ex-wife.
Humans make such mysteries from the most
Common occurrences, all our sleeping,
Napping, crashing, vanishing, dying, dying.

Cape Final, Arizona, 25 September 2017

A kind of bodily resurrection when it felt
Like I'd been in the exact same spot before.
And that other spot, and that other spot.
The bottom railing at Point Imperial at noon,
Surely the same place as Point Imperial
In the predawn chill fifteen years ago
With a new and newly pregnant wife, waiting
For the sunrise over the quiet canyon.
The Point Royal walk out over the perfect
Triangle hole in the ledge, tourists like ants
Collecting images instead of crumbs, surely
The same exact viewpoint as a decade ago,
The marriage now ended, the baby never born.
The rectangular foundations of ancient
Houses left by the ancestors who farmed
Imported beans, maize, and squash there
In the summers, for five generations or so,
Roughly nine hundred years ago, until
Perhaps the world got too dry, with even
The same informational plaques, surely
The same ruins where I stood two years gone,
Wife turned to ash seven years earlier, but
A daughter now to think of, however far
Away from me that day. And so on, Cape Final
To Bright Angel. To return to a known
Place that felt unchanged was to reincarnate,
The body realigned with bodies long gone,
Own especially. A crisp breeze rustled
The hair thinner and more silver than ever,
And the heavy animal hobbled slowly back
To the car. None of this was here. None
Of this was ever here. Every body is always
Older. Every older body, by being so, is new.

Owl Creek Bridge, Utah, 24 September 2017

Some part of Farquhar actually knew,
But that didn't stop the delusion. He swam
And he thought to himself, I couldn't
Help myself, I had to keep thinking through
The drop. As long as I was falling, I believed
In the possibility of escape more than in
The possibility of nothing having ever been
Because as long as I was falling, I was,
And things had quite obviously been. Now,
I just need to survive until I get to shore.
Then I'm sure I can find my way home. Then
Things will just carry on, and why not?
Haven't they always carried on? Haven't I
Always been around, for as long as I can
Remember? Being is the way life is,
And things die or disappear, but every time
I check, I'm still here. There's no darkness
And silence at the end. I'm still here.
Those are the things he thought as he swam
Or fell, or whatever it was he was being
When he wasn't being dead just yet. No one
Is dead, he thought as he reached the trees,
No one is ever dead, only death's witness
From the outside. So why my urgency?