~
Once bitten, thence smitten,
it’s said, but not written,
in the Land of Enchantment,
of New Mexico.

From Tesuque, a Pueblo,
to Mescalero,
White Sands,
which stands
near Alamogordo:

The Sunshine State –
‘til as of late;
the Land of Enchantment,
called New Mexico.

Four Corners are calling,
the Pecos is sprawling,
and the Grande is a river
that everyone knows.

The Chaco Canyon,
all but abandoned
two millennia, or so,
many years long ago,

still standing, lies fallow,
silent and hollow;
it awaits for the people;
a return to the citadel,
of New Mexico.

The Spaniards had tried to
conquer, subdue
this Land of Enchantment before.

But they too, consumed,
soon swallowed, subsumed,
as were all who could not persevere.

This land is so old,
the people enfold
into its sand evermore.

Once bitten, thence smitten
the land so incants,
enchants, and possesses the soul.

Thin vacuoles appear,
wind molecules on air,
the sounds of a past on parole.

There’s no where to go
for each sound but to flow
over sands of the land they blow.

To listen real close,
one can still hear the ghosts –
their murmurs, their chants, their woes.

The mountains and sand,
the forests and land,
and the rivers that steadily flow –

They Know!

They Know!

The land is consuming,
slowly subsuming,
each living being
into its own needing;
eating while sleeping,
as centuries flow.

They well understand
the the goings of Man,
in the Land of Enchantment,
of New Mexico.

Copyright © 2011 Marvin Loyd Welborn. All Rights Reserved. Revised 23 September 2014.