Beans (for Jerry Ramsey)

Dove Creek calls itself

the pinto bean capitol of the world

but there are also the speckled Anasazi

beans, colored like

paint horses

and the mortgage lifters, big potatoey

things with the heft of a rock,

and Mexican beans called bonitas.

These seeds are antiques; you can walk out into

the granaries of the Anasazi, not far from town,

and find the same speckled beans lying

amidst the turkey pens and pottery shards.

They are grown, still, without irrigation

the spindly tough little stalks

tucked into swales of undulating mesa,

tended by farmers,

many of whom came out

here fleeing the dust bowl.

Somehow they never took

up the gods of their brethren.

Like Rain Bird for instance,

the bringer of summer downpours.

Actually, the new gods

would not have them until

1978.

That was the year someone finally

found enough excuses to dam the Dolores river

and what once a warm fetid summer stream

is now a tailwater trout fishery,

but it takes awhile for

The Word to reach out this

Far, for the pipe to lay itself

out.

It will, oh Hallelujah, it will.