She appears between the ice-lined clouds
with lace cascading
from her wings.
She’s watching for the fox
at midnight’s hairpin bend
along the snowy trail .
She has a blessing
for a cast aside backpack and the map somebody
threw down when they realized
they were lost.
Her left eye
is a hawk’s, her right
a Great horned owl’s set in
a woodpecker’s face; one to see
in daylight one
by night.
When last
a jaguar did pass from these mountains to
the Peloncillos and poor men came
to seek their lives on
a frosty night
she knelt upon a cloud
and summoned moonlight from a spring
between the stars to guide them.
David Chorlton