Trembling aspens in the Sangres blush amber,
 Marking the death of summer yet resplendent and
 Witness to my sadness.
  
 The cottonwoods a flinty-gold lining the Rio Grande 
 On the road to Taos the air smoke-scented with roasting piñons.
 I am here but lost somehow.
  
 The winds from the Rockies hum and wail to the wind-chorus 
 Of the calaveras, those strange-lovely skeletons who dance macabre  
 Mocking the maze that is my grief, 
  
 Haunting Halloween, carousing the fiestas, the Dia de los Muertos
 Gracing the morbid but sweet picnics in the cemeteries
 Daring me to join them.
  
 Cemeteries where the generations honor lost loved ones with food
 With marigolds petals, with wide-eyed tears and laughter.
 How do they get past the pain?
  
 O, what we remember and love and ache in the Autumn chill!
 Remembrance. What is Santa Fe if not memory? 
 Can a city live in grief, like me?
  
 Four hundred years etched and echoed in adobe, ornamented with
 Crosses over fireplaces, Navajo rugs and ancient images of saints. 
 sinners, triumphs and losses. 
  
 Sante Fe is more the burning-mellow flame of a candle
 Than any other city on Earth. And its candlelight comes to attend
 My mourning for the dead,
  
 Mass at the Cathedral, to bring grins to carved pumpkin faces, 
 To light up the regretful-happy songs of mariachis in the Plaza, 
 And, against all odds, to give me hope
  
 To calm-quiet the tears of we who mourn, to remind us
 What is Santa Fe, finally, if not firelight, 
 Hope, and a leap of faith?