New Mexico on The Southwest Chief...

New Mexico on The Southwest Chief...

The blue sky is vast,

Wide,

Endless.

Whale clouds swim it in widely-separated pods,

And the tail of the Rockies streches across the Norther horizon.

These Amtrak wheels sing constantly on the rails,

An endless beat keeping time,

Master clock of breakfast,

Lunch,

Dinner,

Destinations.

Albuquerque is somewhere East of us,

Racing to us,

Timed to the beat of random conversations overheard in snippets and bits,

From people who are leaving Everywhere,

And going there too.

The buttes and mesas and chaparral race past in a non-stop panorama,

Sage and barbed wire fences,

Cattle and sand,

Dirt roads to everywhere,

Caved in adobes and old hulks of steel chariots.

The whole world is in desert camo,

Tan and shades of sage and the russet brown of lonely telephone poles.

It's how the journey sings,

If your lucky graced with the swing of an Aermotor windmill pulling water for hot cows.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 07/27/2026