Altar of Leaves
by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
1 –
Poised on the foothills of the Sandia Mountains for all that awaits on the rim of her twenties the sun on her shoulder the valley below a barbed-wire stitching of cottonwoods and alfalfa yet her gaze remains fixed on the western horizon a red-winged hawk a plume of smoke the faintest smudge on the white canvas sky a root spiraling down to the rancho she left but will seek her whole life the tributary scars on abuelo’s fingers the parchment map of abuelita’s smile the family santos with blood on their knees a run-on legacy staining her pages with both hands bracing she fiercely holds on.
2 –
It’s hard not to make too much of the shadows creeping like thieves from juniper and piñon to slip in her pockets the prescient warnings from dead aunts and lost cousins who will knock on her screen in the stillness of night to sit on her bed and talk about nothing and everything and all she can see but can’t possibly know a sensation of finding the brass key to the bone box she had lost long ago and inside its pouches of purple and black velvet a galaxy of silver engagement rings with clear-eyed turquoise she will slide on her fingers while the rain drips down from her trumpet vine window.
3 –
I know how this ends which is why I return to wind and rewind her impending crossing from library to drug store for sandwich and Coke when the man in white smock with sad eyes and Pall Malls reaches across the counter from his loss to her own his deceased wife and entire family line and her younger sister and favorite aunt closing the distance 25 years between them screen credits roll Cary Grant and Grace Kelly if I could offer a prayer it would be in this moment before his tumor and bad heart when the aperture still holds the swell of their light and the pharmacy door closes to the chime of a bell.
4 –
Six decades from now her sandal will catch on the jagged stone walkway beside her front door while watering roses on a hot July day she will fall to both knees as if blinded by knives with two broken toes a pair of gashes and two blackened eyes on the path she had laid to resurrect the rancho grown wild grown mean like one of her stray dogs but the worst of it is finding herself alone in the green valley grass while the Sandias gaze down impassively blue a mirror image from this rose-colored frame two singular women at opposite ends gathering courage for the difficult rise.
5 –
That’s still not right maybe none of this is you may never answer this silent frame this ordinary frame this ordinary pose she is not at all interested in presenting herself in a way to be seen revealing little but an air of indifference a confident composure a distant strength some will call regal her way to survive as a widow with five kids her movement her gesture her turning away from present to past toward a future unwritten the infinite promise within the pause maybe this is your shrine your altar of leaves your unspooling pursuit of how she transcends it’s the space your mother opens by averting her eyes.
Harrison Candelaria Fletcher is the author of the award-winning Descanso for My Father and Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams. His essays, lyric essays, and prose poems have appeared widely in such venues as New Letters, TriQuarterly, Puerto del Sol, Passages North, and Brevity. A native New Mexican, he teaches in the MFA Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Colorado State University.