Two Places

Being
as I am so
attuned to place, so
easy to fall in love,
it is inevitable
the high desert
will
break my heart

even as the home of
my childhood
heals it.

I don’t know if I can
capture this
pin down precisely
the power
that swells inside me when
I set out under this sky or that.

It is in the quality of the light
settling over chamisa
A palette of
earth tones that somehow includes
everything from roy
through g and to biv.
Sun itself infused into a quiet,
wide-open expanse of air,
tea without water.

On these days
even the grit
feels right.

But it is also in a
glowing green,
humid breath of
a thousand thousand leaves
exhaling as one
staining the light
emerald and jade,
blood’s complimentary colors.

Two landscapes
two maps on which I
have laid down
my tracks.

Each is soft in its own way
hard in its own way
loud still vast intimate
in its own way.

Each has
cradled
crucibled
comforted me.

How to choose
one
or the other?

The heart
defies mathematics:
the more pieces
I leave
in the more places
the larger
it
(and I)
grows.