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The tall one, brutally white against black cliffs,
guards her trio of petite replicas.
Anonymous symbols of sadness,
they seem permanent – certainly more permanent
than the lost lives they represent.
How will I feel, rounding this curve, if they are gone?
State Highway 118
Jeff Davis County, Texas
By August, spring-green grasses
are baked into crisp tawny stalks,
sharing the land with serrated
hilltops of inky-black rocks and cactus
the color of rotund green olives –
all under the oceanic vault of sky:
these are the colors of the desert.
The two blood-red splotches are wrong.
A heart, a football helmet, both cut
from plywood then bolted to a metal
u-shaped post, shimmer crimson with
WE
LOVE
YOU
OMAR
painted on the heart.
To the right and slightly behind,
picket-fence ends of a white wooden cross
puncture the scorched air.
At the base of the cross,
stones square enough to have been a wall,
and this:
broken taillight lenses, a snaky length of
weatherstripping, a piece of shattered
windshield held together by safety laminate
as glittery as leaded glass,
all placed carefully, as if to both reject
and reassemble loss.
One sun-faded bouquet is wired to the cross
and another one straggles
one fabric rose,
another one,
then the rest,
down the slope toward the road’s fatal curve.
EUMAR GUILLEN
DIED
DEC
11
1992
wanders unevenly across the marker,
scratched with a hand shaken by death’s bold move.
State Highway 166
Jeff Davis County, Texas
A huge fiberglass building blooms beside the road,
its vaulted rooms guarded by razor wire, security cameras.
Inside, genetically perfect vegetables ripen on plants
whose roots will never push through
warmth of prodigal earth, whose leaves won’t know
the bite of murderous insects, whose flowers
won’t burn from direct sunlight,
harsh and unfiltered.
Instead, the parents of these vegetables
live in climate-controlled wonder,
their roots safely submerged in nutrient-rich water.
An relentlessly-dry drainage channel cuts under the road,
its path marked by three reflective diamonds,
the sharp orange of squash blossoms. Beyond,
two crosses are woven into the fence.
The bottom of each cross is pointed, ready to be pushed
into forgiving soil, but these crosses dangle
helplessly in the air,
as far from dirt as are domed hydroponic plants.
Instead of tomatoes, these crosses bear fruit
of satin flowers –
flowers that will never ripen, never wilt.
State Highway 17
Jeff Davis County, Texas
Down at the fenceline,
next to the memorials and looking up
toward the highway,
parallel arced tracks show where the spirits –
freed on impact – left their containers
and fled, up the rise, gaining
speed, creating loft,
until at the crown of the road, they lifted off,
catapulting themselves
into the sky,
to become
stars, clouds, shades of blue, the moon.
Flung skyward, these spirits are
pollux, elnath, arrakis, sadalbari;
cumulonimbus, mammatus, pileus;
cerulean, azure, lapis, or sapphire;
long nights moon, the moon of winds,
the moon of red grass appearing:
each a memory watching over who was left behind.
State Highway 17
Jeff Davis County, Texas
All that is left of the sheltering cross is a metal rectangle with shards of rotted wood inside.
The three little crosses are still there, one with blue flowers, one with white-going-to-yellow ones, and the third one featuring patriotic themed florals.
In front of the middle cross, a pearly white cherub, wearing a patient expression, holds a dove. Another smaller cherub wears a garland of pink and blue buds.
Though still looming large in my imagination, without the tall cross, the remaining ones are so small as to be nearly invisible.
State Highway 118
Jeff Davis County, Texas
Informal square-rocked stairs lead up the cliff. Lately, someone climbed here to put a red rose at the base of the cross.
In this light, a thick drip of paint, a slow teardrop of loss, casts its own shadow.
State Highway 118
Jeff Davis County, Texas
Just past the first curve in miles
faded flowers snared in barbed wire
call attention to a pile of stones
that support a small brown cross –
nameless, dateless.
A mechanical pencil
stands with military precision in the stones,
placement too precise to have been random.
In the narrow cattle trail behind the fence,
a fresh cow patty bakes in the sun,
soon to dry to a rippled weightless pile,
another unmarked symbol of life.
State Highway 118
Jeff Davis County, Texas
Inside a curve, on top of a rock, the tole-painted white cross oversees its universe:
pieces of broken rear-view mirror, reflecting tiny bits
of the hazy summer sky
implied-water of distant cottonwoods
pipe-organs of black cliffs
pale feathery mesquite leaves grabbing at its head
State Highway 17
Jeff Davis County, Texas
Staked on the outside of the curve, the cross leans away from the harboring cliff as if seeking sun. Behind it, and above, a dozen yucca spikes – not yet in bloom but considering it – lean out at the same angle.
State Highway 17
Jeff Davis County, Texas
The fence, a flimsy barrier between twin invasive species of highway and mesquite, is adorned with one simple wood cross, weathered to a stringy gray, two budded crosses with hanging Jesuses in each, three cones of fabric carnations, and one new wreath, its flowers still pliable.
In the middle, the skeleton of last year’s wreath is a green fence-side mandala, offered by the monks of memory.
State Highway 17
Jeff Davis County, Texas
State Highway 118
Jeff Davis County, Texas
