Home, after a long absence

…not many things as blue
as the sky in Taos on a clear winter day… .


1
When Kali the Destroyer gives final suck
to the world that will die and yet be reborn
The color of the poison with which she anoints
her nipples
Will be the color of that sky.


2
The great god Thor has yet to find a paint
so blue for his sky shield
And when he casts it behind the midnight sun
It looks a little pale and worn out
Compared to the sky in Taos.


3
It is said
that Antonio Gaudi never came to Taos,
And so the pilgrims to La Sagrada Familia will not see there
true blue, but
only the approximately blue sky of heaven.


4
Every summer, beside a dusty old adobe in
Arroyo Seco,
A cornflower sprouts; and, if it gets precisely the correct amount
of water, and of drought,
It blossoms, a single floret of Taos sky blue.


Fini
Long ages ago, before there was a Taos,
or a world,
The great old ones, Father and Mother,
raised up their perfect child and
named him Death.
And they clothed him in black — of which
darkest night was made in memory.
And they planted the sun in tribute
to his smile.
And made the Earth so that all things
precious therein could be his toys.
And so that none would ever mistake him —

His eyes are mirrors
that reflect only those things
as blue as the sky in Taos on a clear winter day.