Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu

Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu


I imagine the time of our meeting
There among the forms of the earth at Abiquiu,
And other times that followed from the one -
An easy conjugation of stories,
And late lunches of wine and cheese.
All around there were beautiful objects,
Clean and precise in their beauty, like bone.
Indeed, bone: a snake in the filaments of bone,
The skulls of cows and sheep;
And the many smooth stones in the window,
In the flat winter light, were beautiful.
I wanted to feel teh sun in the stones -
The ashen, far-flung winter sun.
And then, in those days, too,
I made you a gift of a small, brown stone,
And you described it with the tips of your fingers
And knew at once that it was beautiful -
At once, accordingly, you knew,
As you knew that forms of the earth at Abiquiu:
That time involves them and they bear away,
Beautiful, various, remote,
In failing light, and the coming of cold.

N. Scott Momaday
From the book In The Presence of the Sun © 1992.