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The Sunday Poem: Sandra Valle... Postcard from Michigan

"I read Dee's poem this morning up in cold and gray Michigan and was moved, again, by what she wrote. And I missed New Mexico even more…"

New Mexico is like that.

"I moved to Albuquerque a year ago from Michigan. I've spent the last year getting settled, writing, and learning the difference between growing vegetables in Ann Arbor and the southeast side of Albuquerque. "

Postcard from Michigan

It's gray here and almost nothing
more needs saying
in Michigan winter a survival
course in tricking your mind desperate
remainders of sun, color and light winnowed
from holly berries, mulched pansies a faint

reflected summer shimmers open
to lavender and mango skies mountains
(always the mountains) vision of dry rivers
and chamisa New Mexico blossoms belief
collapses past and future, here and there
until tonight in the damp, cold dark

I walk from this gray here, my past
down this brown-grassed hill dive
through the iced pond swim
into the Rio Grande
walk into "the tent of your blessed funkiness"*
into Albuquerque

*"the tent of your blessed funkiness" from Slouching Toward ABQ by Dee Cohen

--Sandra Valle

Poetry submissions are welcome. Email theditchrider@gmail.com.

3 members like this

Comment by Margaret Randall on April 8, 2012 at 8:32am: Beautiful, Sandra. Scenes of New Mexico always make good poetry!

Comment by Julie Brokken on April 8, 2012 at 9:31am: love your transitions, the magic in your leap of imagination into this enchanted land... pansies to lavender and mango skies, "dive through the iced pond swim into the Rio Grande". Thank you.

Comment by JeSais on April 8, 2012 at 9:36am: fantastic!

Comment by Ben Moffett on April 8, 2012 at 10:23am: Venga al Valle

Rio Grande!

Venga al Valle,

Sandra Valle

Comment by cathyray on April 8, 2012 at 10:32am: you really captured it!

Comment by Dee Cohen on April 8, 2012 at 11:21am: Sandra, It's hard not to be inspired here, isn't it? Sometimes contrasts are good reminders. Very nice poem. Dee

Comment by Barelas Babe on April 8, 2012 at 11:27am: I like this! Could see it all in my mind's eye...

Comment by Sandra Vallie on April 9, 2012 at 6:45am: Thanks to all of you for your comments. It is an inspiring place, yes, and so are the people who live here. Thanks for the original inspiration back on that wintery Michigan day, Dee, that called out so strongly of home.

Comment by Birdie Jaworski on April 9, 2012 at 9:05am: New Mexico has one more letter than Michigan, and that letter makes all the difference. And so does your beautiful poem...