Los Arboles

Long ago and today, the leaves, as they always do, had much to say. All of it different: various whispers and rattles, secrets told under cover of wind and darkness.

Now, I sit – no, I lie, under them listening. Lip reading until I can read no more. Stay a while, they say. Rest. Breathe. Choose your path with heart and follow it.

Yesterday, I drove all day and into the night. Into exhaustion. Into frustration. Finally, a campsite, an hour from our original destination served, when there was nothing else to serve and no safe way to carry forward. The horse and dogs were ready, as was I.

A staging area for cattle; twenty-one head by my count. The gate, a heavy rusted thing which closed in increments to a serenade of tarnished notes: high, low, long. After unloading, I perched on the edge of the pipe fence, one leg over, one under, and watched the horse run to and fro, bucking and kicking. A new calf played along.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am the tortoise, not the hare - but sometimes even tortoises must step out. Trot. Dash down a new road in search of that one perfect sunbeam, that one perfect rock. Of course, to touch the rock is to know stability, but to touch the slender stem of an oak is to bend with life.

Someday we will be gone, if we are lucky the trees will remain. I wonder if they’ll remember my touch.

And the grass, will it recall my weight on its back? The wind the feel of my hair? And the rain! The rain which wets those same strands so assiduously, pauses for a moment on bare shoulder for a quick glance around, a kiss perhaps, then descends. Will the rain remember the taste of my skin?

In the rising heat and warm breeze of New Mexico, the sun is bashful and hides her bedtime ritual. A poorwill sings from the east; his artful notes glide across wooded pasture and I find myself waiting for him to call again. To welcome the night. To remind me of home - for the roads we know best are closest to home.

But I am not at home, and here in the foothills of the Gila I have run too far, too fast and fallen short of my destination.

I reach upward and place my hand upon fragile bark; with each gust I feel the tree shiver. It passes along raised arms, then down, deep into the lungs where a breath must be drawn and held as if the wind itself has dipped into my soul and wants nothing more than to linger. It drapes across my stomach, hips, between sturdy thighs, through dense and delicate calves and ankles and finally, bare feet on bare ground.

It is a song of beautiful things stacked together and once inhaled there is no going back, the tree now lives within. It stands solid and sings: don’t write a book with just one page in it, go out and live.

It is impossible not to hear.