These high desert roads make no sense,
twisting and turning and causing countless
fatalities here in the mountains and table lands
of northern New Mexico;
Old cow paths now make up the crazy
criss-cross roads in Boston, while what
used to be wagon tracks and Kit Carson’s pony
express routes here in the wild, wild West
became the asphalt roads of today, whether
or not they are practical, which so often
seems not the case;
In clear weather, this particular switchback
is safer than when iced over, but it’s blind/blind,
impossible to see what is coming due to the grade,
despite being posted 15 mph, and yet it is
one of those critical conveyances if one is
to arrive in the distant community of Taos;
Might as well slow down and enjoy the long
purple view, the Sangres and Picuris mountain
ranges converging, carving verdant valleys
accessible only by certain routes, and one is given
to wonder how these far-flung regions ever settled
in such remote places, and yet how could people
know what areas would eventually be centralized,
spreading into towns and cities, they were
simply indigenous, all of them, and some do
remain much that way;
Still, remote is how we, ourselves choose now
to live, across mesas and into the Tusas mountains,
despite only a tiny paved state highway bisecting
cattle-dotted valleys in this particular region,
conveying the traveler Up and up for some
twenty miles straight into a dead end
where Ponderosa forests harbor distant lakes,
which surely appeared as mirages to early explorers
and where rivers thunder or meander, depending
on the season, where elk roam and deer jump,
and mountain lions and black bears sequester safely
under rock faced cliffs, in crags or cracks,
high above and distant from access roads,
across impossible to traverse valleys
in which humans are less likely
to blunder in blindly
and scare themselves silly.
belas bright ideas 