as orion falls
poetry, hispanic american studies
by aaron a. abeyta
Author is the winner of the American Book Award and Colorado Book award for colcha

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as orion falls

i will begin with our unborn children
the ones i tell Michele will look
to us like the season’s first snow
resting beneath the burned trees
of last season’s fires

later i tell her that our children
will be like the first time we saw the pacific
i only see them in symbol
each time they are something wet
after too much dryness
i love them already
so we name them
Amalia and Andronico
and i finally dream Amalia into existence
she has enormous brown cheeks
her hair is soft as
the underside of a bird’s wing
and her smile is like the train
coming into town
after Sam Duran tucked the ball under his arm
one second on the clock
forty yards out and he begins to run
one tackle two three broken
he scores and everyone for miles
is honking their horn
we are waving to one another the whole town
smiling as if it were 1977
everything is i feel young again
and then the train begins to whistle
her heart boiling with the fire of
soft black coal legs uncoiling coiling recoiling
as she eases into the depot
her whistle loud and unexpected
is what we are all feeling
and this is the way my daughter
our daughter will smile at us
when everything is young
again

even train whistles are short lived
save them in memory
but their reality
the loud part of the metaphor
the consolation for the sad part of us
cannot last

i am writing about the possibility
of a daughter whose smile i’ve only dreamt once
and less than twelve hours
after Sam began running we are sad again

he was 17
i didn’t know him
his mother is a good person
i didn’t know him
the last time i saw him
he was smiling
he had red hair
write it down
he drove a tan escort
he was smiling
his hair was red in all the hours of light
write it down
Chris Ruybal his name
no one knows why he did it
there are others

Laverne’s liver fails blood flows from her ears

Brenda drinks prestone

Bino’s mother asks three times
for a poem about her son
tell everyone how he was a good guy
rescued Ana from the swing
where her hand was caught
picked up my hat after that sixth grade fight

write it down

how Eddie made you laugh kool-aid all over his family
and how you saw him twenty years later
cutting through the alley
on his way to the liquor store
write it down
how he died and you didn’t even know he was sick

there is a list of reasons why
i shouldn’t dream my daughter
but she is my snow in the burned trees
the pacific after the desert
i haven’t told you yet
she is orion at 1:54 a.m.
a sunday in september
on the dark road home from albuquerque
she is reason to breathe
to whistle unexpectedly
lists i say
Ronnie always smiling
and the wednesday before thanksgiving
we are all sad again
no one knows

Vanessa
who went for a drive before she was 16
the roadside burned
a cottonwood caught fire
her locker had apologies taped to it
lists of names
and my aunt wants
me to write about people who are alive
another woman asks me
why i am always writing
about someone that
no one gives a shit about

i can only tell her that
it is my job
to write about the someones

this poem will be long
the names real
the list partial

i want for this to be a love poem
i don’t want the young white woman
to smile an i’m sorry smile
in my direction when
i tell her i’m from antonito

here is a story i remember
it is about love
sometimes it becomes a metaphor
for what love really is
i am six years old
my abuelito driving us toward the cow camp
we drop down into ortiz
her old houses silent in the orange part of the day
the first house on our left
becomes my abuelito’s story
the mesa 300 yards east of the house
becomes its conclusion
“there” he says
it is a chimney missing bricks at the top

i think the Durans have always lived there
one in particular must have been beautiful
surrounded by flowers
one tree in the yard
dress of well pressed flour sacks
her hand raised waving
to the man who loved her
who daily would drop from the sky
his plane like a bird wrapped in thunder
his engine growling out
what the silent wings could not say

there in the thick part of the summer
in the red part of the day
the two of them must have been
a wonderful metaphor
for what i am trying to say

Ortiz would profess his love
his plane buzzing her house
shaking los santos en las ventanas
until they became tired of his love
maybe it was their jealousy
something about the sky
that their ceramic smiles were hiding

most people say it was a gust of wind
i think it was too much weight
the plane dipping farther toward the ground
was not an act of nature
it was the weight of what would have to carry us
something like the persistence of the santos
waiting for heaven in a north facing window
brought the plane down
the landing gear knocking the brick teeth
from the root of the house
Ortiz losing control
the woman with the flour sack dress
dropping her hand slowly with the red plane
until both were finally resting
one shaking the other burning
in the black rocks of the mesa

now we must find other examples of our love
something that will not burn itself away

Alberto died of parkinsons
he taught me how to irrigate
every time i see a shovel worn smooth with use
or smell a flooded alfalfa field’s sweet scent
recuerdo
acequias of cold water
a field and an old man
Alberto
steady with his shovel
who saved me from the wet rattlesnake
under the tarpolio
the snake striking once
at the air above my right foot
the shovel coming down on its neck
Alberto Gallegos saved my life
taught me to irrigate
these are the same things
write about
the worn shovel
the scent of an alfalfa field
return the favor

Manuel Ortiz
did the impossible
found water by using a bent willow
i remember the well diggers
a man in a white shirt
with a machine that sent sound into the earth
telling everyone to dig and so we did
120 feet down there was water
we tapped it pumped it for about a month
and then it went dry
the man in the white shirt
with his poetry machine
had only been partially right
so we called Manuel
my abuelito’s good friend
who arrived in his white ford
his black dog sitting in the passenger seat
he never went anywhere without that dog
they only had each other

Manuel Ortiz
his body bent by the immeasurable weight
of the willow in his hands
walked around as though he had lost something
a small knife in the dust
a wedding ring in the cut weeds
a small voice in the earth
until finally he stopped
the willow quivering and bending
innately toward the water it believed
could save it and us
and then we began to dig again

40 feet down
water flowing over rocks made of candy and ice
never going dry
though it sputtered this summer
barely enough to cook with and drink from
Manuel Ortiz water witch
dying in the driest month
finally answering the voice
deep in the sweet cold part of the well

i want for this poem to be about living too
there are 112 lambs in the bosque
they run through the march morning
moving like water
running in a bosque
alive and together
tails wagging in the cold air
before the sun rises

i want you to see my gente
they are cottonwoods
wild and bent
at beautiful and dangerous angles
we are not straight stands
of thin skinned aspen
or broad pine and spruce

we live near rivers
our scars evident
we have branches that turn on themselves
we are impossible to imagine
but our sombra is ancient

the bark of our bodies thicker than wind
our bent arms swaying
in the windy spring
the force of that wind
multiplied by our persistence
should equal something
like our death
something like a constant falling

yet here on the bosque floor
in the thickest parts of the shadows
there are cottonwood blossoms forming
waiting to drift
people soft as snow
speaking quietly about
all there is to live for

i want this poem to be about seeing
about the alamo that does fall in the wind
and how the others protect it
in their gnarled way
and pray for it
with their soft spring blossoms
which fall into the
exposed heart of the broken tree