On the Way to WorkRichard Soberpaintings

The Dogs of Madrid

There are places where people live
more openly wounded than others.
Their hurt betrays their humanity.
As if a brown, wrinkled, and cracked
landscape could inhabit faces,
arroyos winding through raspy voices,
twisted roads through half-told stories.
As if a landscape could unleash dozens
of stray dogs between miners’ cabins.

Things change. Dogs come and go,
or lie half-asleep all day on splintered
porches, the only witnesses to the dry wind.
Blackjack, half-blind guardian of the closed
real estate office. Tork, blue-eyed lover
of tofu and canned beer. Goldie, early morning
wanderer of rickety bridges and eroding hills.

Past cottonwoods, teasing, as if the brittle
leaves could produce water with the wind.
Past gaunt, soft spoken women and men
ripened to perfection.
Past the dogs of Madrid, ghost town, junkyard,
coal black rut meandering up to windswept
Waldo Mesa, the shallow grave of miners and
motorcycle kings. Things change. Very slowly.
In the shade of a pinon,
a black cat stares.

RS 2005

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