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| SANDIA MOUNTAINS |
The mesa was brown
in this barren, dry land.
My dad decided to take a stand.
Armed with a shovel and rake in hand,
He shoveled, and raked clay into yielding sand.
Kentucky, blue-grass seed was sown by hand.
Until the days were done, the soil was kept damp
against the hot, western sun.
Within days, tiny blades emerged
Pushing against the stubborn, brown earth,
Moving the soil that once had been dry,
Reaching, stretching, growing toward the blue
of the sky.
In a desert land,
Ode to one man's stubborn stand,
A green oasis grows beside a desolate, brown land.
A lawn was born!!!
In 1953 we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our house was built on a cleared mesa. The lawns
were planted by hand. At the end of the street, the greenness ended and the mesa sat brown and unmoved. I remember my step dad saying that one day the houses would be up to the Sandia Mountains.
Today, if you visit Albuquerque, the Mesa has been claimed and houses sit under the majestic Sandia
mountains.
I will always remember, when I was 9, helping to water our Kentucky blue-grass to keep the ground wet. Our back yard was never planted...it remained barren. I would use water and the clay...mix them together and make my own "mud pottery." Soon the sun would dry them out and the wind would blow them away.
I no longer live in a barren, brown land. I live in the midwest now. At times I remember this child hood memory.
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