WHAT’S NOT LOST

 Something happens 
 when there is an absence of 
         foundation 
 there is a direction chosen 
 where heart, intent, and desire, meet 
        intuition—where 
 preservation meets development 
 meets community 
 to set a precedent 
 for instances in which the likes of 
       MOMA follow suit.

 Architecture and ancient character 
 conversing as if they’re 
 of two different tongues 
 but translation isn’t lost altogether—
       instead a romantic erosion 
 set in motion 
 a revival that was 
 and remains 
 inherently difficult. 

Yet performed with grace 

and put in place 

as Santa Fe Style, 

Where seven sings of luck 

like ceremony 

like the planting of a seed 

for means of interpretation 

an authentic invitation 

to the American avant-garde 

What was once considered 

to be hopeless and backwards in ways 

saw a change — 

 a shift in the foundations 
 a brown and round revival 
 one that danced toward an identity 
 worthy of development 
 deserving of preservation. 
 Development of value 
 preservation of meaning 
 and the sustained promise 
 of authentic existence 

 abound—within these rounded 
 walls, 
 in these echoed halls 
 with floors that ache 
 to speak—oh the stories they’ve heard. 

 of creation 
 expansion 
 collision 
 dialogue and growth. 

 musings of inclusion 
 a unique revelation 
 a gift in the desert. 

 One of sand and mud 
 earth and sky 
 and everything in between 
 the in between, 
 it’s where we find ourselves, 
 now. 
 As cultures have clashed, coalesced 
 coalesced, clashed 

 Erosion, a term not quite 
 fitting, unless we aim 
 to find the beauty in what is lost, 
 the treasure that is story, 
 that is song, 
 that is memory until memories are gone. 
 and so here, 
 striking are the instances 
 of remembering— 
 where we came from 
 who we are 
 where we’re going. 

 100 years removed from this place in time 
 what might we find at this particular site 
 what will have beautifully eroded 
 into a quest for something more 
 to be questioned 
 to be brought about in the idea of 
 beauty, of belonging, 
 of story and legacy. 

 And where is that 
 Santa Fe horizon, somewhere else? 
 Likely anywhere 
 and that ought to be just fine to those 
 who have walked these halls 

 and shared in the 
 creation 
 the construction 
 the preservation 
 of beauty 
 in 
 art as response 
 in motion, 
 in memory, 
 forever. 
             —Carlos Contreras

Note
This is the latest in a series of commemorative poems El Palacio has commissioned from Carlos Contreras. He has also written “Along the Beaten Path” for El Camino Real (bit.ly/ecrpoem), “It Used to Be a Village” for Coronado Historic Site (bit.ly/chspoem), and “Communion in the Desert” (bit.ly/nmhmpoem) on the occasion of the opening of the New Mexico History Museum, among others.

A FESTSCHRIFT ENDING ON A DRAWING BY RICHARD TUTTLE

 Window-glance of lilacs on adobe, a 
       light breeze and sunlight
 shivering thin shadows on the wall, 
       tulips blading up 
 through loam and leaf-rot. From brush-
       stroke and trowel-slip,

 from windrow poplars leafing-out to 
        wind-dwarfed oak, 
 a shadowy yet lucid history—water 
       rushing the ditch-mouth, 
 rose and lilac rifted alike with 
       mountain light and thunderhead,

 with elk-bugle, bear-chuff, bolete and 
      chanterelle, the silent rift
 between first sight and pounce, the 
       lion shadowing the straggling lamb
 like a painting that carries the heft of 
       gold-leaf, of clay and wool,

 the arched stroke of horses, golden in 
       the mist-shrouded meadow.
 We are like that newly-sighted woman 
       oppressed by the vituperations 
 Of shadow, of color—the bugled blues 
       and honking reds pressed hard

 against her eyes, her ears, purpling 
       everything—a blastula of color,
 a fistula, a fist that whelms and 
      overwhelms with newness 
 until the barest stroke of graphite—
       part line, part silence—tacks

 across a flat pond of lined paper, a 
       light hand on the tiller, buffeted 
 by chance, by the weight of sunlight 
       on penstemon—a breath so
 gentle now across the earlobe carrying 
       just your whispered name.

—Jon Davis

MOONRISE OVER HERNANDEZ

 The baby never slept, and if she did
 it was only for ten minutes at a time.
 She wasn’t distressed, simply inquisitive.
 She didn’t want to miss out on anything.
 At dusk I walked her in my arms around the Plaza.
 The moon rising above Picacho Peak pleased her, the star 
 over Loretto Chapel illuminating the narrow streets of town.
 We climbed the softly worn stairs of the museum,
 the uneven wooden floors giving way under my feet like a 
       well-watered lawn.
 She craned her head and stretched her arms toward the dark 
        vigas of the ceiling 
 with its carved red and blue bulleted pattern.
 In a narrow room painted the green of a young ponderosa,
 she gazed at Ansel Adams’ photographs,
 moved her eyes across the southwestern sky of his prints,
 pointing to the small white speck in the black sky
 rising over snow-capped mountains, the river village of 
       Hernandez, 
 and said her first word, up.

—Elizabeth Jacobson

WHAT CAUGHT MY EYE

Would life be richer if the sunflowers blooming
Became tanagers and feathers flew out of the bird.
Maximilian yellow hit the George Bellows blue sky

I used to live below the abstract, adobe,
a tract house in the real.  Our field flanked 
La Mesita, inhabiting John Sloan’s masonite.  

Oh Georgia, You drew me, lured by a skull,
a blue feud. I arrived and found a pelvis
by the road, caught is what I know about bone.  

I ride this white painted horse home from the
“Rendezvous.”
My horse is in oil.  My horse is in alfalfa. 
A group from India passes between this life and my last.  

Two of them take illicit photographs
next to two Hopi dancing in bronze, 
a rattlesnake held in teeth

The man who donated his kidney strolls by.
Life always grabs me, rattle and fear,
Though my people rarely handled snakes.

Paint gasps for canvas.
We toss our lives back and forth, smile, 
Handle what we dare.

—Joan Logghe

This poem was previously published in The Singing Bowl
(University of New Mexico Press).

THE REHEARSAL

Thunderheads above the Plaza,
a stop, a start—
guitar and violin rehearse.
One of those days
when conversations can go wrong
but the violinist is barefoot and cheerful
in hot pink and kelly green
and the guitar player smiles adoringly.
“It’s fantastic!” comes from the audience.
Rehearsals are confusing,
as is life,
the same problematic measure
over and over
and how many times I’ve looked
at these murals—
St. Clare rejecting the worldly life
in Pre-Raphaelite fashion.

The crucifix reaches higher
than the Mayan priest’s staff—
these images speak of conquest—
and Christopher Columbus
dreaming of a schooner’s
red sails at sunset.

Then Robert Schumann
Piano Quintet in E-flat,
the poor composer
dying in the insane asylum.
Yet it seems so amazing
to be walking around needing only
a stringed instrument
to produce these notes.
The piece so familiar to my ear
yet essentially unknown.
Notes falling and falling and falling.

How each person
in the audience
contains an entire world,
remains mysterious,
even to themselves.
Sorrow, greed, opinion, accomplishment, secrets, lunch.
Who can walk down an avenue
in a great city and say—
I am complete.
Now the violinist is playing the cello!
Showing off or to prove a point.
And the cellist is laughing.

—Miriam Sagan

EARTH AND WATER

At home, though out of place, caught in a spell,

like Rousseau’s nude drowsing on her jungle chaise,

a numinous radiant-white outsize shell,

suggestive, slyly, of a desert skull.

Painted in reverse, on the back of glass,

at home, though out of place, caught in a spell.

In the first brushstrokes, fine as filoselle,

the details are laid down: wisps of snake grass,

a numinous radiant-white outsize shell,

camper in which itinerant undine could dwell,

at any moment to emerge and gaze,

at home, though out of place, caught in a spell

under the creviced juniper, the swell

of distant mesas, now iconic as        

a numinous radiant-white outsize shell.

An echo chamber, like a villanelle,

through which the rhymes of desert seas can pass,

at home, though out of place, caught in a spell,

a numinous radiant-white outsize shell.

—Carol Moldaw

THICK TIME

 At dawn the Sangre de Cristos usher in slants of light;
 all begins anew amid cool clean breezes 
 in the ancestral homeland of our relatives, the Kiis’áanii.1

 Yootó2 is resplendent in the clear morning:
 piñon, cedar and juniper, low red hills
 and huge cottonwoods along the river 
 and the Plaza glisten in the new day.
 They are eternal witnesses.

 Near our home, the huge yellow chamisa are at their finest 
 in the bright September days though we admit
 our detour around them due to their boisterous scent 
 and loud bees feasting on their nectar.
 The young chamisa are perfectly round and stately; 
 their still-closed blossoms eager to debut in a few weeks. 
 They emerged in exact proportion to nearby stands 
 of brush, cholla, yucca and sage.

 The crisp morning summons the sleek train 
 that is piloted by a bright yellow/orange roadrunner.
 The car carries tourists who talk loudly though seated 
       together; 
 they are compelled to share their grasp of local food, cafes, 
       shops and pueblos. 
 Sullen students lug huge bags down the aisle then sling 
       them onto seats;
 they are shielded by headphones and pause only to tap 
       intense texts into the world. 

 Solitary tourists keep watch on the landscape, snapping 
       pictures 
 of lone horses on the hills, the crimson bajada dotted with 
       green brush 
 and lone billowing cloud. Near the depot, they take selfies
 suddenly smiling broadly and unabashedly 
 at their outstretched hand. The sudden action momentarily 
      startles others. 

 Fridays on the Santa Fe plaza:
 slight winds carry enticing whiffs of hot dogs, burritos and 
      kettle corn. 

 Bright balloons rise languidly above shrill wails and 
       outstretched hands. 
 On the verandas above, people sip cool drinks, dine on spicy 
       dishes
 or warm, crusty pizza. Their banter and laughter wafts 
       across joining 
 the din of children running about, that tall guy talking 
       boldly into his phone          
 and the teenagers huddled on the grass sharing smoke
 their hushed voices punctuated by occasional whoops of laughter.

 The huge, leafy cottonwoods regard the stooped elder who 
       treads warily; 
 she pauses to watch the children carelessly bound ahead. 
       She smiles 
 and recalls those delicious days when she too was light and 
       untethered. 

 Ecstatic little dogs struggle to sniff every inch while minding 
       their “good dog” 
 status lest they are picked up. It’s torture to be carried in 
       such a delectable place!

 Near the Obelisk, a busker strums guitar while silently pleading 
 for another bill, or better yet, a fiver. As graying hair falls over 
 his bowed face, he recalls the long-gone years of dim smoky 
       bars, 
 rowdy laughter, fanciful undying camaraderie, cold sweaty 
        cans of beer 
 and that huge clear bowl stuffed with bills. 
 “Ah, Kentridge, the residue of the past is very much with 
       us,”3
 he says to himself and smiles. 

 At the museum, my footsteps creak on the worn wooden floor,
 Along the court yard pink hollyhocks and cerise roses 
 are radiant against the thick earthen walls.
 The portals play annual hosts to strands of shiny, fresh ristras; 
 their deep, red iridescence a celebrated contrast to turquoise 
       skies. 

 Inside the dim museum, security guards politely shush 
       patrons,
 whisper restroom directions then move about silently.
 I wander through the halls and consider lines, colors, 
 angles of light and time conceits in varied works as 
 Maria Martinez, Scholder, Houser, Rembrandt and Picasso.
 The echo of each scribble, line, stroke of pen, brush or yucca 
       leaf 
 gesture from each frame, from decades, and centuries ago. 

 Later, I sit beside the Santa Fe river where the fluttering 
       cottonwoods 
 evoke my ancestors’ long-ago journey to Yootó. 
 In the mid-1860s, the Diné were rounded up by the U.S. Army. 
 They were to be imprisoned at Fort Sumner, 
 but were first marched through Santa Fe to quell fears 
 about “marauding” Navajos and Apaches. 
 To the capturers’ surprise, the townspeople attacked the weary 
 disheveled children, elders and families. 
 They threw sticks, rocks and some even kicked and struck them. 
 Alarmed, the military formed a protective circle around them
 then finally led them southward on the 200-mile walk to 
       Ft. Sumner.
 The Diné were held there for four years then released in 1868.
 In the afternoon din, I stretch my arms 
 and straighten my back: a reminder to maintain posture. 

 I see myself as others might: a Diné woman alone in Santa Fe
 though I am bequeathed again with prayers, songs, and memory. 
 I understand that the huge trees, the cold river, dark velvet 
       mountains 
 and even the thick brown walls recognize me. 

 They bid me to return so as to cherish our ancestors,
 and the multitude of gifts that surround us. 
 We are bidden to remember their journeys 
 as we prepare for the days ahead.

—Luci Tapahonso

Notes

1. The Pueblo people.
2. Yootó is the Navajo name for Santa Fe, meaning a necklace made of beads of clear cold water.
3. William Kentridge, Arc Procession 9. Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now. New Mexico Museum of Art. September 2017.
4. Diné means “The People” in Navajo.

THE REHEARSAL AT ST. FRANCIS AUDITORIUM

Xylophone, triangle, marimba, soprano, violin—
the musicians use stopwatches, map out
in sound the convergence of three rivers at a farm,

but it sounds like the jungle at midnight.
Caught in a blizzard and surrounded by wolves
circling closer and closer, you might

remember the smell of huisache on a warm spring night.
You might remember three deer startled and stopped
at the edge of a road in a black canyon.

A child wants to act crazy, acts crazy,
is thereby sane. If you ache with longing
or are terrified: ache, be terrified, be hysterical,

walk into a redwood forest and listen:
hear a pine cone drop into a pool of water.
And what is your life then? In the time

it takes to make a fist or open your hand,
the musicians have stopped. But a life only stops
when what you want is no longer possible.

—Arthur Sze