Transmountain Drive

Transmountain Drive
El Paso, Texas

Three moons and five suns ago,
I stood on your desert mountain,
purple skin sheathing the night.
I gazed downward on the multi-
lights of my city, quivering like the souls
of Don Juan de Onate’s dead
and the Twelve Travelers.
I lay in your seven laps of light, three

companies of angels brushing me with breeze,
cool on my skin.
Like a holy man, I sat looking down
on your colored clutter
of stucco and brick, crows swooping deep into your core
and out of you. I will come back to you, bulwark

from which I sprang. I will wrap my arms
around your houses,
I will grind myself against your walls,
stain myself in the juice
of your berries. I remember your nights,
when sky came down slowly
to meet the summit of you,
came down like a sheet of muslin

tucking your natives in for the night,
muslin that converged colors,
color that poured out of sky like a pallet of peacock,
until all citizens
within your bastion and all those across your river
in their blue and pink houses
lay under a cincture of orange.

Like a fire, fervid and flashing, sun skimmed our rooftops.
Like a god, it dropped down, stamped its name
on our dry land. I will come back
to three moons and five suns ago,
sleep in and on your belly,
ten million stars flickering like Aztec tears in your skies.


Marian Haddad

Posted over on Pecan Grove Press