I Would Wish Her Another Mesa
As I stand
at the edge of the canyon
I suddenly remember
an old soft-focus black and white
my father took of his city bride
astride a palomino
his raven-haired bride
with dark Indian eyes
She is beautiful and strange at once
and
she is
smiling
into some vague and wonderful future
this man promises
She is out here on a precipice
overlooking the whole sandstone West
no clouds to shatter into rain,
no,
nothing will ever hurt her again
right now
she rides like she was born on the mesa
Who knows what happened next
what my father did
or what she lost
did she even know how her dreams dissolved
like a darkening scene from an old Western movie
Who knows how she found herself
back home in the East
settling behind sooty windowed factory walls
alone
at work
in an office with no view at all
I would wish her another mesa,
another mountain ride,
I would wish her fulfilled
of the promise
she dreamed so many years ago
as she rode above the canyon
and smiled or maybe ached
for youth and the West
for whatever she had never had.
–Canyon de Chelly