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| ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP, August 16, 2024) — Watchdogs are raising new concerns about legacy contamination in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and home to a renewed effort to manufacture key components for nuclear weapons. A Northern Arizona University professor emeritus who analyzed soil, water and vegetation samples taken along a popular hiking and biking trail in Acid Canyon said Thursday that there were more extreme concentrations of plutonium found there than at other publicly accessible sites he has researched in his decades-long career. |
Northern New Mexico
How many daybreaks
have I risen
to the drum/chant/flute spirit
of high desert’s Jemez,
sacred Indigenous mountains,
dancing my western skyline?
I wanted to escape Manhattan’s
work encampments,
false pinnacles of glass
and steel,
to find here,
at seven thousand feet,
gifts of earth/air/water,
untrammeled
by humanity’s heel.
The breathtaking cleft
that serves as the gateway
into the Jemez—
like a canyon pathway
into the clouds—
lofts me,
calls me
into another world.
Nature’s handiwork in the Jemez
expresses itself
in a thousand volcanos,
asleep for now,
fanning out from Valles Caldera,
planet’s largest,
grandeur that,
across Rio Grande’s valley,
seems all mine.
My hiking ardor leaves
its imprint
in that elk-abounding
encirclement,
a trail of joy,
marking every season.
Yet not without sadness.
I have first to pass
Oppenheimer Alley,
where the brain of man
explodes an idea,
whose remnants scatter
the countryside,
forces unseen
that torment the Jemez
without known end.
Los Alamos’ lights
at night snake downslope,
pointing at me,
atomic city’s
unrepentant reminder
that my escape
was less promise,
than dream.
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Wingless Dreamer, Blueline, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 250 poems, published on four continents.