BY TIM RAPHAEL

It’s right there

in the Book of Plats,

D-193 at Page 967,

Records of Rio Arriba County,

our four acres

in the vicinity of Dixon,

as if even one

of these cottonwoods,

blaze yellow in October,

could be flattened

in a file drawer.

A deed should be

a watercolor –

a series of them to catch

the river’s swing

of steel and slate

through the day –

a vast palate

of desert rust,

all the tans, reds

and browns around,

but green too,

a splatter of garden,

and gallons of blue

for New Mexico sky.

And music –

moon-filled coyote cries,

the town dogs’ reply,

night frogs and day finches,

the thunk of a hoe

in spring.

Bloodless lines

of surveyor’s codes –

Tract 2, Section 28, T23N,

leave so much

unrecorded, no mention

of the King of Spain

or Francisco Martín

who was bestowed

this land in 1725,

as if no one

were here before –

this sweet rise on the Embudo –

as if the Pueblo artisan

who made this pinch pot,

shattered black and white

bits surfacing in dirt,

has no claim

nine centuries later.

Tim Raphael lives in Northern New Mexico between the Rio Grande Gorge and Sangre de Cristo Mountains with his wife, Kate. They try to lure their three grown children home for hikes and farm chores as often as possible. Tim's poems have been featured in Sky Island Journal, Windfall, Cirque, Canary, The Timberline Review, Gold Man Review and two Oregon anthologies. He is a graduate of Carleton College.