Crossing -for Todd Moore 1937-2010

He sits outside smoking, drinking & breathing
In the corpse sweet smell
Of the Aztec earth. It is pitch black,
Mexico, the hard pure universe of
Night & death

Mangas Coloradas,
imperfect winter tool of the
gods,
astride a good pony
the rare snow last night spitballed
sideways, frosted the organ pipe,
each flake disappeared in his hand
before it could declare its
individuality, a
brittle irony
not lost on the aged chief.

Soon,
despite the hoarseness and dust furies
of
the droughtscape,
it’ll be time to harvest the macho dark
magic of the mezcal
eastern slope of the Chiricahuas.

Just north of the border,
oblivion rhymes with vermilion,
not a soul
was caught in the living act of crossing
just the winter wired coyotes;
now in his seventies,
dreams of one last score,
riding off some Fronteras rancheria’s
renegade remuda
in the dark because
revenge this sweet must
be Mexican, must taste
mezcal bitter on the tongue,
the dusk glows saffron
as the earth rotates lustily
into hard shadow.