Melanie, I will follow your writing with much interest! Found Ghost at Milagro Creek at Bookworks.com and am so eager to read.

Recently, I spent a few days of a yearly visit to New Mexico in the Espanola Valley, where I heard the local news, felt it was odd how a less populated place could be as violent as my city of residence--Chicago.

And then I wrote a little about it:

Newcomer Hiking Outside the Village

Between fenceposts to high desert trails,
is a gate of brittle juniper sticks and sagging wire
to public paths on the henna-powder mesas,
the pinyon-meal lomas and the chaparral.

Beyond the cottonwoods just over west,
gunshot pops on the sportsmen’s range.
The dry land in between bristles at leaning fences,
complicit with boots in the discouragement of my sneakers.

Neighbors know it is tame enough
or they have faith enough, under wide skies.
Women like me, with freckled arms, walk out here,
willingly meet eyes with ocotillo blossoms
and dawn coyotes.

At the gate, I scan to crossroads for trucks,
for sunglass glints, glances from souped-up cars.
To be unseen. To be alone and unseen.
I can, its likely true, outrun you, imagined one.
But not your bullets, nor a blade from behind thick tamarisk.

No one sees me…

Below the first hill, a rash oasis,
a wash mosaicked with splintered glass,
the widespread tesserae of bottled beer.

At the second, a frame of rusted bed springs stands,
an upright grave marker for a sun-eaten engine
on a sere battleground of latex and rubber viscera.

The third, a downslope scatter of blue cans,
and red, that gave-in to hard heels of old children,
oh, how they gave in.

I hope no one sees me.

Here, fourth hill, is a vantage to green-platinum grasses,
to ridges watched by cedars and natural spires.
This trail, now, chuffs softly under my treads,
sprays powder and pine duff up onto my limbs,
out where pinyons drip incense sap in dry air.

Your air, old children who live in town,
who ride low, and high,
of whom I am afraid.

Thank you!

New Mexico always instigates poetry.