Once every couple months
Capt. Barefoot heads up to Junction
from mesa-top Norwood via the back way:
scenic sheer rock mudslide temple walls
of the Dolores River Cañon
“Snorewood”
as some Telluride denizens call it
half ranch & half bedroom satellite
to industrial tourism’s San Juan
moonshot
Worth the gas to stock up
on goods of all unavailable kinds
otherwise only deliverable to one’s door
by corporate predator Amazon
Google Musk & such sick ilk
Always worth stopping too
amid an orgy of shopping, errands
visits & St. Mary’s appointments
to indulge a walk of GJ’s artsy old town
Main Street
Sidewalk sculptures parse for us
the grammar of America’s commerce
Tell us of now, if not the future
via the calligraphic features of
our interpreted present imperfect past
Make us take that backward glance
while racing forward
Like that one day Capt. B stumbled
on the Old Friends Trading alley
of Lawrence Spencer’s Diné murals
& got transported back in time
to a Navajo trading post market orange
All ages of Reservation Indians milling
about their horse-drawn wagon
pulled by a mis-matched pair
Next in line came a marvelous capture of
a Yeibichai first frost healing dance
Indigenous men in their regalia
Breath visible, feet in motion
Night blue overtaking the orange
Capt. B could almost hear the bird-like flutes
the insistent thunder of the drums
Taking him back to the days of Gen. Mackenzie’s
forced march of the Uncompahgre into Utah
Promised the Grand Valley in DC
before Ouray died & Otto Mears pulled
a bait & switch. Had the Nuche driven at gunpoint
to an existing Uintah rez at Fort Duchesne
Gov. Pitkin & Sen. Teller rid of the Ute problem
Ranald Slidell “Bad Hand” Mackenzie
commanding the black bayonets
Punished the White Rivers for their resistance
to Christianization by a poet preacher agent
Lumping in the innocent Uncompahgre band
including those who lived along the San Miguel
where Capt. B makes their home
settler-colonialist immigrant-supplanter
late-comer pioneer of Europe’s
civilizing wave
A flash flood of white
roaring through red rock
& book cliffs to fan out its latest
overburden of dug-up wealth, pumped oil
& the government’s endless
zippers of pavement
ripping open the land’s surface skin
to reveal uranium foundations, commercial
exclamations, residential dead-ends
All the built extravagances
of the Western Slope’s century of theft
Beauty’s murals
do strange things to one
sez Capt. B
For many they inspire
For some they make us weep
