While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
–William Wordsworth
High above Taos in the Sangre de Cristos
I lie on a bench at the ranch,
Gazing up through the pine’s branches
As the noon sun splatters on
The ground and bounces off the bark, scored
By wind and age. The light, a halo’d gold-
Dust, swirls through the twirling limbs.
The breeze, a thousand sighs, in the seam
Of light and shade, breathes through
As I breathe—like the tree I carry inside
Me, the same growth and all
That disintegration. I have fallen into
A day-dream-scar left by a frond or some
Leaf of a poem. The lines will live on
As a different union of words
Long after I have gone. This ponderosa
Will tower as it towered a century before
Her painting. O’Keeffe lay on this bench
Under this pine that she claimed as her own
All those nights contemplating how
The top of the tree reached up
To brush the stars—the pine itself
Seemed to proclaim I am your god.
I lie here dappled in the sunlight
Waiting for a sign of my own, watch
A grackle alight on a branch above me
And hear it call out her name.
-Chell Nevarro
Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Savage Torpor Poetry, I hold an MFA in Poetry from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, live in Kansas City but consider Arroyo Seco, NM my spiritual home. My publications include Bear Review, Sprung Formal, Lily Poetry Review, and Typishly among others and have written and published two chapbooks “Don’t Shoot the Augury” and “The Fetish of Maude Tatum.”