At the western edge of the llano, in a town
named for a starving saint, the famous author
sits in the park writing. His cragged face
seems eternal. His mustache thick, straight,
and white as cold bronze allows.

Your eyes trace the bas relief on the adobe
wall. The images are worn down. Still,
you can see the sheepherder, the sheep,
the llano, the Pecos River. The jalopy full
of Okies traveling west on the Mother Road.

In the foreground: the aproned curandera.
The young boy kneeling before her,
fishing pole gripped tight, face raised
in supplication: Bless me, Ultima.

You’ve come here by accident—
or unfathomable design. A journey
west, a night’s rest. A morning walk
has led you to this place where the
famous author sits writing.

Once, long ago, he wrote beautiful words
for your first novel. You never met him.
His kindness blessed you then. Too late,
you bless him now.

Along the strip, ghost signs clatter
in New Mexico wind. Empty steel
frames shaped like arrowheads and saguaros.

At the author’s feet sculpted bronze pages
line the walkway, set hard in cement,
cursive letters worn down.

Words lost to grit and wind.

The reflecting pool is dry, paint chipped
and cracked. As impossibly blue as the
white flock flecked sky.

Dead leaves line the border.

Beside your motel: a scoured concrete
slab where a gas station once stood.

Nothing remains, not even bones.
Just tan desert grasses alive in the cracks.

You long to know what endures.

Not pages, books, adulation, fame.
Not parks or raised statues, not even
this earth, scarred and wounded as
we’ve made her.

Even stars and planets die.
The heavens arc and change.

‘And still,’ the famous author
wrote, ‘there is eternity:
silent, unopposed, brooding,
forever.’