Bellemont (and don’t forget where you came from)
I came from the dirt west of the Continental Divide,
The Camp on the side of highway 66,
where we lived in 1944, twelve miles out of town,
by the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,
across from the Navajo Ordnance depot, seven thousand
feet up, below the bright mountains: for a kid,
just a dash and quick skip from the dark woods.
This is the Place said the sign.
I ran with five brothers, my own-blood two,
and the three Jones boys, half-Apache, half-Laguna.
We tunneled under slab-wood piles, the cheapest stove wood
the sawmill sold, rode our old hikes in deep cinders and mud,
got lost in the woods with Cecilia Apodaca & the Hammermiller kids,
getting home before the search party could find us.
Just in time for the whipping.
My family, you see, my community.
Thus, in this place where I was happy,
I say that I came from the dirt of Bellemont, and proud of it;
from the dirt, the ground-in stuff that makes you part volcanic ash
and part cinders, all gritty-toothed and grinning.
Strangely, though, when winter comes to BeIlemont,
you transform, become part of the snow, of the white shining Peaks,
of the great slow flakes, the individual crystals, a delicacy
you can't believe, caught on the sleeve of a woolen coat.
Then, season-turn-round, and you belong once again to the dirt,
black sticky, spring and summer mud, squishing about
with the blackbirds by the roadside pools
where tiny unnamed creatures swim:
mud older than the hundred years of human traffic,
buckboard wheels mucking through it, mud
vibrating to the passing deep-thundering train
and coughing automobiles.
Bellemont dirt: the I've-got-you-under-my-skin
kind of dirt that you can never scrape off,
dirt that quickly reaccumulates after the weekly bath
in the big metal tub by the wood stove in the kitchen,
where mother has to scrub your grubby little neck
to refresh its natural color, make it pinker, in fact,
than it was before, the blood all risen,
you see, from the dirt.
Like me.