On Taos Plaza

This poem appears in the Winter 2017 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

We’re here to see some friends and get
a dose of culture—chamber music, art
(in painting, jewelry, architecture). Yet
the most important sphere may be the heart.

Two couples, old, one member lame, one ill,
we mark at least the fact that we’re alive
at eighty, thereabouts, while love is still
in summertime. And vigor may revive

where we are happiest, among blue spruce
and cottonwoods, and in the famous light
and quintessential air—a lucky truce
of latitude, aridity, and height.

We’ll take a slow turn round the square and let
day ripen. Dinner next; and we’re not through,
for music waits—piano, string quartet.
Clouds in conceptions illustrate the blue,

and Taos Mountain shimmers in late haze
of turquoise, Maya’s necessary veil.
To fortune, then, long love, new health, we raise
a toast—along the Old Age River trail.