1950 Corrales: Albuquerque apocalypse oozing toward us.

Coronado’s winter haven: exotic river,

Watermelon Mountain alpenglow and the seductive Bosque.

A new kind of river for us:

irrigation was central to life,

the acequia madre was in back.

A model Sandia Pueblo was right across

but gringoes ignored its lessons.

Kids’ barefoot sensing changes:

Mackinaw sands to NM dirt ground.

Clay, sand and caliche.

Stickers and evolution/ecology

in the desert floodplain.

Adobe walls were part of how dirt was a bigger deal.

Sally’s room had a oiled, dirt floor

and a legendary liberator ghost.

The ditch ran through what we called a lawn,

next to the Portal life changed.

We had to do regular chores outside:

feed the horses, chickens, rabbits, dogs.

Horses got grain from a big barrel

with ferocious pocket mice and razor teeth.

Flood the fields and the garden,

dream about sweet melons.

Susie was the nicest horse.

Bootsie was the weak-kneed piebald one.

Alfalfa bales piled up, growing mold.

Roadrunners, ground squirrels, quail and jack rabbits.

Hutches with rabbit wire and cuniculture.

Have you tried a Rose rabbit recently?

Slaughter seemed brutal and we didn’t watch.

Pa couldn’t kill them after two months.

A lot of curious juxtapositions and misfits:

Visitors from Michigan came and went.

Uncle George and Kathy immigrated from Erie.

Billy peed into the heater one night.

The Roadmaster didn’t blend with the culture.

We didn’t eat chile yet.

Why was it so hard to walk to the river?

Jetty jacks in the bushes, empty shotgun shells...

These are things I noticed from the first days of living in Corrales, a place very different from Birmingham, MI. We came to a place closer to how the world used to be. The change for us was felt by little things but they ramified appreciation of where we all came from--a healthy, educational step backward.