Come with me on this worn track
through the old Simpson ranch,
the wind a watery blast on my face
so harsh I squeeze my left eye
tight shut, a Clementi sonatina
swept right out of my humming
when I squat to pull a cholla spine
from the dog’s paw. Every six feet
or so, another brown dusty worm,
I thinking tonight they’ll freeze.
An old Hispanic shepherd
south of here wrapped each sheep in a shirt
after the March shearing; oh they must have been
a sight, hundreds of them in their khaki suits
skittering into yellowed meadow on little black hooves!
But the old man passed; his son
thought that silly; one March,
a storm took near a third the flock.
The car’s near, the junipers blow
bronze with pollen, no way
any of us can escape this wind.
—
Sheila Cowing lives with her coon hound Louise in the shadows of two mountain ranges. She has published award-winning children’s nonfiction and two collections of poetry, Stronger in the Broken Places and Jackrabbit Highways.
200 New Mexico Poems 