Georgia O'KeeffeBlack Cross, New MexicoArt Institute of Chicago

Thunderhead

Disinterred, twisted among chamisa and the adobe cathedral
I have come here, naked, to the bloodless ground clutched
in hands of bone, a place pregnant by a thousand others' names,
a thousand lives the color of earth.

From a height that is above the sky the mountains
lift to taste the rain; with turning wind the mountains
groan of Christ, mute to my ear, the rain a rosary of beads
in the dirt.

In the cathedral's shadow pueblo women sit on the plaza,
they are not of this time or of the cathedral; they are the pueblo
and the mountain, and the clouds and the rain.
Their wheat-wrinkled hands rest from jewelry
in the small of the afternoon.

Near them my August laughter falls dry and colorless
to my feet; their silence asks the question for me,
should you have come here?  Did your flatland birth
offer you a home where you were before?
Your loneliness goes before you like a dog in the road.

John Carle

(previously published in Nimrod, Awards 12)


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