Cloud-filled gulleys.
A killing ground-- flame
smoke, steam -- so

steep the fire crews
let this one burn.
Smells like incense

from ten miles away
looks like Shangri-la,
mind-road to Buddha-land

sunset pouring straight
into those clouds
then straight back out.

A great result from fine economy. Masterful, especially that ending. A pick, later.

milner

and there's a cool history here too----it's about this historic mining town in the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico, which has caught fire frequently in the last hundred-and-some years----many people lived there and many died there in its miniature wild, wild west----which is now on the National Register of Historic Places...

methinks it's a very cool poem, Rick----I love the last strophe, which speaks to me of how something, which, from a distance, appears pristinely beautiful, can actually be found to be quite foul and deadly, upon closer examination...

michael

I don't know where you get the town, Michael.  I don't see no town.  :o

Rick

Hi, Rick----I found two helpful references:


1.  http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nm/mogollon.html

"NAME: Mogollon
COUNTY: Catron
ROADS: 2WD
GRID #(see map): 7
CLIMATE: Cool winter, hot summer
BEST TIME TO VISIT:Anytime COMMENTS: Just North of Glenwood.
REMAINS: Many original buildings.
 The mining camp at Mogollon was started during the 1890s in the bottom of Silver Creek Canyon. Several mines of some note were started with the one named Little Fanny gaining the reputation that is the history of the town itself. The presence of miner's consumption was so severe it was not uncommon for miners working the Little Fanny to last only three years or less. The ghastly toll of men working in the mine forced the owners to develop the method of spraying water under pressure from the jack-hammers in breaking the quartz for removal from the mine. As the dust was reduced, so was the patient load for the town's three doctors. The population of the town at the time Little Fanny was being developed was about 2,000 and that was in 1909. By 1915, the mine's payroll each month was between $50,000 and $75,000 with the mine's gold and silver bullion being shipped to Silver City by mule team. During World War I, trucks took over hauling the ore to Silver City but the end was in sight. As time progressed, the assay value of the ore began to drop to the point it was no longer profitable to continue operations. When the Little Fanny closed down, so did Mogollon. Submitted by Henry Chenoweth"

and also:

2.  "Mogollon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Mogollon may refer to:

Mogollon culture (c. 150-1370 CE), a culture in the U.S. Southwest
Mogollon Plateau, part of the Colorado plateau
Mogollon Rim, an escarpment which is the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau,
Mogollon Mountains, a range in southwestern New Mexico
Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollón, Spanish Governor of New Mexico from 1712-1715.
Mogollon, New Mexico, a ghost town located in the Mogollon Mountains"


michael

 

I love learning new things like this!

But Michael . . .

1) There's no town in the poem.  Just a mountain.  I mention killing, but plants can die, too, and animals -- not just people and towns.

2)  A mountain is a pretty big place.  You can have a town on it and a fire on it at the same time and never the twain need meet.

3) Your source about Mogollon, the town, doesn't mention a fire.

There are times when people find things in my poems and I say, "How about that!  You're right!  It's in there!" but this isn't one of them.  Even if there had been a burning town, I might have edited it out.  I was trying to describe a thing I had never seen before and probably would never see again.  That's all this poem does.  Really.  It's not that deep.

Thanks for thinking so, though.

Rick

PS:  It's pronounced "MUG-gy-own," but I didn't care if people pronounced it "Moe-GOL-lon."  There's something about the look of that name on the page that says "mountain" to me.  The word Mogollon even has a profile sort of like a long, stretched-out mountain. 

Also by saying "Baldy," I allowed the reader to see a mountain with a lot of rock.  The contrast between the rock and the light was important to me. 

I'm going to give something away.  The actual scene did happen, but not on Mogollon Baldy.  My wife and I have argued over exactly which mountain it was.  They're all clustered together in a range there.  Doesn't matter to the poem, though. 

Yup. I just love this stuff!

well, Rick, here's where I got the fire thing, found it in Wikipedia:

History
In the 1870s, Sergeant James C. Cooney of Fort Bayard found a rich strand of gold in the Gila Mountains near the future site of Mogollon.[4] A miner named John Eberle built the first cabin in Mogollon in 1889, after mines were developed in Silver Creek, which runs through the town. A jail and post office opened in 1890, and the first school was added in 1892.[5] During this period of growth, Mogollon absorbed the population of nearby Cooney, and helped towns like Glenwood, Gila and Cliff grow because of their locations along the trail to the town. Between 1872 and 1873 the stagecoach from Mogollon to Silver City was robbed 23 times by the same assailant. He was eventually apprehended by agents of the Wells Fargo.[6]


"[edit] Mogollon Historic District
The entire Mogollon community was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Fannie Hill Mill and Company Town Historic District in 1987. It was cited for its industrial and architectural legacy from 1875 through 1949.[14]

Several mines were built in the Mogollon-area, including the Little Fanny, Champion, McKinley, Pacific, and Deadwood.[15] Together with older prospectors they extracted approximately one and a half million dollars of gold and silver in 1913, or about 40 per cent of New Mexico's precious metals for that year. In their lifetime, over eighteen million ounces of silver were taken from the mines of the Mogollon Mountains, which was one-quarter of New Mexico's total production. Close to twenty million dollars in gold and silver were extracted, with silver accounting for about two-thirds of the total. Many regarded Silver City as merely a railhead for Mogollon's eight-team freight wagons packed with gold and silver ore.[16]

With the decline in precious metal values after World War I, it was no longer profitable to continue operating the mines. The town grew again after a brief recovery in prices in 1937, but World War II again caused a slash in the demand for precious metals, and this, accompanied by the devastating fire of 1942, almost finished the town. In 1952 the Little Fanny was the only mine in operation; today it is shrouded in silence. When the Little Fanny mine closed down, Mogollon deteriorated.
michael

Michael, you're beautiful!

and you, my friend, are very wise...

love ya,
michael

The poem tugged on my sleeve and asked me to remove her epigraph, and I complied.  She doesn't want to be a deep historical ponderment on the nature of suffering in a certain town in New Mexico.  She wants to be a sketch, with whatever "deepness" there is, being background material in the service of the scene, not a hidden message.  So, snip, there it goes.  Only you, dear friends, will know it was ever there.

Rick, I like the poem as a sketch dependent on on its own struggle and juxtapositions. The external stuff is interesting and would provide grist for perhaps another poem, another day, but this one has the right economy as Milner said. Are you by chance a fan of Lorine Niedecker?

larry

Thanks for reminding me of her, Larry.  I ran across her work many years ago in grad school and liked it a lot.  I got bit by the economy bug from WC Williams and the Japanese classical haiku masters.  My self-imposed quest as a young poet was to find the smallest unit of poetry, the elementary partical, the po-eme. 

terrific.  much enjoyed, rick.