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| Photo by Dick Altman. |
Northern New Mexico
When I settle here,
overlooking
Rio Grande’s
historic valley,
the Jemez
mountains,
ranging
across
the entire
western skyline,
hold me
spellbound.
Daybreak
brings them
brilliantly
alive,
to be worshipped
by Puebloans,
beyond memory.
Nightfall
turns them
into a stage,
where
piercingly
magenta skies,
unllike any
I‘ve ever seen,
welcome
high desert’s
glowing
obsidian
dark.
I can only
imagine
how
Puebloans
revere yet
what they
call
their sacred
peaks.
I’m tempted
to call it
sacrilege,
when I realize,
high on
a promontory
looms
Los Alamos,
cradle
of the nuclear
age.
For me,
the site
is anything
but an artifact.
Friends
work there.
I’ve passed
through it
many times.
Hiked the hills
embracing it.
My ridge aligns
with Mount
Redondo,
a few minutes
south of the lab.
Valles Caldera
of one
explosions
ever to rock
the planet.
I often wonder
if Oppenheimer
chose Los Alamos,
for its intimate
proximity
to the caldera.
I can almost
hear him
spurring on
his atom-splitting
cohorts:
“We may never
match that
volcanic
cataclysm.
But I believe
we have
the minds
to create
a weapon
of such power,
unlike any
in human history,
to stop in its tracks,
the war.”
For those
like myself,
who call
this majestic
geoscape home,
his era,
to my disbelief,
is far from over.
Just weeks ago,
containers
leaking
nuclear
waste,
of the Cold War,
were allowed
to vent
into the air.
The winds,
I dread to say,
prevail from
the west—
towards
my ridge.
But what
of the Pueblos,
under which
a lethal chemical
flare in the soil,
originating
at the lab,
slowly worms
its way toward
tribal
ground water?
So far,
no amount
of science
or money
can stop it.
No,
to me,
Los Alamos
lives neither
as just another
spot
on the map.
Nor anything
resembling
history’s
tomb.
.
Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, 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 over 280 poems, published on four continents.