Ecotone Volume 2, Number 1
Across the Broad Hills, 1885: Claudia MonPere
Sky thick with rain,
land rich for grazing: sagebrush,
brome, red stem filigree.
My lambs grow fat.
Shy white spots
bunched around Jacalitos Creek.
Lollie pours drinks at the Santa
Fe Basque Hotel. I do my
talking with the wind.
Thin, silver,
my words pipe into the canyon
The sheep graze. Weeks
flow through me. No one
but a ring of bandits
hunched around my fire
one night. We drink,
play some hands of Music.
You are mine, I call,
to the land I don't own.
They spill from my dreams,
seventeen gutted sheep.
Maki barked into the trees.
Still the lions hunted.
Yes, I am only a tramp.
sheepman. My greasy
tent, my hobbling burro.
My lambs, my lambs.