Eagle Hunters
The photos of the Mongolian eagle hunters
for a dizzy moment throw me for a loop—
that somebody a year or two behind me back in school
who I scarcely noticed should be living there now
under the sacred mountain ranges and eternal snows,
in spring filming the Apricot Blossom Festival
in ancient orchards, in the Himalayan valley villages
out of time and the world—traditional music and
storytelling by elders, mask dances, blessings by
the monks
from ancient monasteries in a zephyr of prayer flags.
In contrast, I meditate on the single apricot tree
outside my childhood bedroom window—
guardian, shade-giver, wellspring of jam,
and photograph a pair of goldfinches in our feeder,
close-ups, the background blurred.
I think I might reread The Snow Leopard,
or find the copy of Death in Kashmir somewhere
on my bookshelves, among the many other
travels I don't take, safe in my well-mapped world.
My favorite teacher in high school admonished
on a quarterly report:
she's already decided how she's going to be.
Mountains too close, too high and stern, unsettle me.
And being on them, above the tree line, exposed,
without that kindly childhood apricot to shade
and shelter me, back in the Santa Fe garden confines.
So why envy the lives others make for themselves
up high? Why am I tempted, as I was one late winter
by Roman archaeology in the high Alps—beyond
my reach, or desires, I'd thought, until I was there
standing in those new unwieldy hiking boots
looking down like a doubtful god at the slight, tangled
thread of road leading to a far village far below.
The world I love best is much quieter, closer to earth.
Hawks come here to me from time to time, if not
Golden Eagles, their hawk feathers crosshatched
with ancient heiroglyphs, messages from
that other world assuring me I'm just where I belong,
my chosen realm no lesser than that exalted other.
Peripheral longing aside, gauzy pipe dreams,
I'd after all
decided long ago already what I meant always to be.
images: Selena Travel,
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