Albuquerque twilight
I wish
I could sit there, high on West Mesa—
just beyond dusk—
and bathe in the warmth
and breathe the soft earth-air
and watch the city …
its jewel-encrusted megaliths
besieged by an army of campfires
that stretch away to the foot of the Sandias,
standing there silent and solid
under chalk-dusted peaks…
and I would look and breathe
and feel and think until I
and the city and the fires, mountains, air
all fell asleep…
tucked under a warm
indigo sky.
I wrote this poem and gave it to Christy on her birthday shortly after we'd started dating... trying to impress her, of course. She had been back to her home in Albuquerque the week or two before, for the open house of the new Albuquerque temple, and while there she'd sent me a postcard of Albuquerque at night, from the west. I did a little research on the Internet and decided the photo must have been taken from "West Mesa" (I found out later that Christy grew up in a home on West Mesa). So I studies the picture for a while and spent several hours crafting this poem. Amazing what guy will do for a girl he wants to impress. Anyway, it seemed to work, and this poem remains one of my favorites to this day.
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