Albuquerque Poems

On the final day of the Creative Placemaking Summit West, I learned of a website of poems written about places in Albuquerque: Poetic Routes.

So beautiful, and now I want to write poems about every corner of Albuquerque I love.

The next poem I need to write is the family history of Supper Rock, where my mother and father still congregate for mealtimes at different tables.

There is a family history (my grandfather's memory?) of piling into a horse-drawn wagon after the Baptist church service at Broadway and Central to trek up to Supper Rock for an evening (afternoon?) meal. It took the rest of the day. Such fun, such adventure. A whole day that reduces 50 years later to a 20-minute car ride and 15 minute walk around the park ringing what's left of Supper Rock like a pocket watch chain.

Map of Albuquerque

East is always up,
the Sandia mountains compassing the gravity of home.

Time sediments west from earliest memories
mining for Copper in the foothills

walking in gridded geometries toward Moon
a Collet Park childhood

a city bus ride's distance up Lomas
from Grant's middle school tomb.

Life didn't break open past Wyoming
until the University cranked open its creaky arms

to my college curiosity
where place and poetry and history and philosophy

took root in me
with mentorships that grew episodic

like cottonwoods
close to a river that I only discovered years later

coming home
to myself and a family that knew

the richness here
was the only food for DNA

shaped like lava
bedrock

sanded over with dust
decorated by ancient hands

whispering in winds
tickling volcanic escarpments

that laugh the stories
of our oldest neighbors.

Love began again
with the choice to start  a new family

in the caldera of an extinct fire
in the valley of friends

ringing my days and years
with reminders of who I have been

who I have said I wanted to become
in this place that leaves me no place

to
hide.

(Photo: Roberto E. Rosales)