Reies Tijerina’s shadow is nostalgically dimming

and more like Robin Hood than Gandhi.

Tierra Amarilla’s courthouse, painted sickly green.

The Brazos box and Jicarilla piñon/juniper land.

Old boots and wheel wells stuck with wet, oozing mud.

Gadwalls and dried-up smectite places like Stinking Lake.

Canjilon Lakes, delicate high pools in dry mountains—

already overused churro land

where people carved RT on the bark of live aspens.

And now Miguel, young males in basque families

shepherded lambs up to blue grama pasto.

Indohispanic people of the valley.

Then Texas money and “ranching”

overwhelmed territorial familia.

Now Canjilon is an overused State Park with pit toilets.

Hatchery rainbows instead of cutthroat.

The grama goes to “home grown” beef,

sold for BBQ to ex mid-westerners--

Boozing it on lawns in trailer-festooned Duke City.

Black aspen letters have faded

along with the aspirations of king tiger.

The old spanish land grants of New Mexico got bought by rich Texans.  This made the spanish upset and led to tensions, especially in Northern New Mexico. We tried to understand, but the gringo migration was relentless. Milagro Beanfield War.