After an arduous drive from Albuquerque to North Carolina in the wake of ice-storm Titan, our return from the long trip to Las Cruces found us face to face with taxes and preparation for the Lake Junaluska Peace Conference. Now that that’s concluded, I can return to writing and woodworking!
There are still some writings I want to share from our time in Mesilla, New Mexico, where the veneers of modernity still offer a thin place to sense a life which still casts shadows and images into our own.
American culture is still permeated with the Hollywood images of the Wild West, of brave Indians and relentless cowboys, of bandits and flinty sheriffs. This leads us into the bizarre politics of guns and anarchy, as well as providing rich territory for historians to debunk the myths. The curio shops, however, depend on the images.
In Mesilla, it’s the trial of Billy the Kid, a fragment from a time of dislocation, poverty, and the lure of easy money.
A modest adobe building on the edge of the plaza housed the trial of Billy. The curios, souvenirs and local crafts inside can hardly give us a taste of the raw edges of life in the 19th century. But the building’s memories were enough to tweak my awareness.
Desperados
hopeless
ageless
oh so young
Billy
Butch
Kid
Jesse
Dancer
in the sun.
Gunned up in life
gunned down in death.
Yet we are fascinated
living in a world
depending on tomorrows
how they lived in face of death
suspended
without hope
a reckless
vile
freedom.