Walls

Almost at times I can see the old ones 
Along the big cut of the arroyo
Where the tall cottonwoods drink
Glorieta Creek, digging clay.

Handing up the baskets filled with 
Red earth, carrying the baskets along
To the new church rising amid the 
Burned ruins of a mighty edifice.

Making bricks, soaking clay in the pit, chopping straw
Treading all together, scooping the pliant mud into forms
Half a vara long. 

Then, as now, raven perches on the rising mass, 
Hawk circles, rattlesnake shelters in the shade 
Of the corner facing the mesa, thunderheads
Building in the afternoon.

I wonder did the black-robed priests try to stop their singing, 
Or whether the music came like the laughing of the jays 
Among the piñon trees. 
We sing at our work even now, unravelling repairs,
Chasing down the hidden channels where water
Courses inside eroding walls – even I sing
Throat tight with cultural restriction, but I sing – 

“Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged”
The rhythm fits slap of mud, scrape of steel trowel, 
Gentle heave of heavy brick into the soft mortar
Bed waiting to receive. 

No digging in the arroyo, no baskets for us 
Modern masons raising a stabilization encasement- 
We get our clay from Victor’s cousin in the big green 
Navy surplus dump truck, mix it in the concrete pit
With the Bobcat’s front end loader, don’t even bother 
to chop the straw. We tip in the vat of plastic concrete
adhesive, shovel the soupy mix into plastic lumber 
forms that bear no relation to varas or the length of
our tired forearms, cover the drying rectangles 
with a brown tarp to keep the wind from them, 
the never-ceasing, all-devouring, brick-cracking wind, 
then scrape them down leather hard and stack them to dry.

Some of the bricks will sit bravely on top of the wall, 
some are cut to bits to fill the hidden interstitial hollows where 
water flows unwanted in the big September storms, channeling
out ancient adobe, washing down the leavings of ages we pick 
Up at the base of the walls – children’s teeth, old men’s knucklebones, 
A deer femur, a rose-headed Conquistador nail.

Mix earth with water
Mix, stir with the hoe until it takes
That creamy froth that tells it is 
All mixed through. 
Then wait. 

Overnight let the moon swell the clay, 
Stars, dew wet the clay, in the morning stir
The clay again and again.
Slap a big handful against the wall
Lifting upward in an arc
Like a gritty meteor
Rising from the earth, shuffle
A step the left, slap again and ride to the sky.

Cover over tracks of rain, cracks between courses
Mica sparks glinting in the sun, stars in a muddy sky
Covering, nourishing, sustaining, preserving
Replacing the skim of plaster that washed to the ground 
In the last summer rain, that cracked in January’s hard frost
Sloughed away in spring snow, crumbled away in drifts of 
May flowers. 

Cover before the rain comes again with the cholla blossoms and
Fourth of July fireworks, summer rain, summer’s grace, 
summer’s wasting strength. All the time knowing the 
work is futile, a nail in a sandcastle, string for a snowman,
this melting-soft cream layered on the melting mud wall, 
Plastering over of the past, continuation of the past, 
Act of faith in a world to come.

Author: Duncan MacNae

Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees. duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com View all posts by Duncan MacNae