Advent Calendar Day 9 - November 20
Excerpt and painting from Hearts in Motion, Hearts in Place, by Enrique R. Lamadrid & Jim Vogel.
Enjoy this poetic excerpt and its accompanying illustration—plus, get 20% off this gorgeous and giftable book, today only.
The Celestial Authority of Birds
“I returned to my native New Mexico in my search to better understand deep Querencia through the winged, feathered constellations of the birds that anchor me to my home ecosystem,” writes Enrique R. Lamadrid. “Why the avian focus? Because they are celestial and so prominent in the landscape, visually and aurally. Each has its own story and song of place.”
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Piñonero: La religión del piñón / Pinyon Jay and His Religion
In the frenzy of the piñón harvest,
wherever it may be this year,
noisy Piñoneros plant many millions
of nuts just under the surface
with their crow-like beaks.
They seem to know where
the most rain has fallen,
where the piña verde is ripening,
where the crop is bountiful enough
to survive the coming seasons.
Fallen to the ground the generous nuts
have no wings of their own,
and if the jays don’t get them
the squirrels gather up every one
into their secret larders.
Deer hunting northeast of Las Cruces
with my compadre Gilberto in broken country
with open sighted 30-30s at the ready,
we rest and eat under pinos.
In his pack, tortillas, chile jerky,
chocolate, with two coffee cans,
beans in one corn in the other?
—“It’s for squirrels, grain for piñón,
if we find one of their stashes.”
—“¿De veras? No way, really?”
—“If we’re out of luck, at least we can
roast maíz and boil frijoles.”
Jealous jays spy on each other
and try to memorize where
other jays plant their seeds.
If they catch each other spying,
sometimes they plant pebbles
as a ruse: deception as avian
evolutionary survival strategy?
What else to do with a brain
un-preoccupied with long migrations
or celestial navigation? ¡Piñoneros!
migrating from grove to grove
flashing feathers heavenly blue
following cerebral maps so detailed
they remember almost all their plantings
with GPS accuracy, using sun and moon
or the electro-magnetics of the earth
instead of satellites overhead,
sepa Dios cómo lo hacen /
only God knows how they do it.
Only a few forgotten nuts
sprout into entire forests.
In the spring, stiff breezes
gust in mountain foothills
blowing yellow pollen clouds upslope,
fertilizing tiny flowers of piñón, pinyon, piñón,
—“Ca-a-aw, ca-a-aw, ca-a-aw, ca-a-aw”
to the six directions.
Flocks of jays hop around,
cocking their corvid heads,
as if jogging their memory.
In late summer they fly over
foothills and canyons and linger
where aromatic trementina de piña verde
wafts up, chemically signaling them
to stay and mate and nest and wait
for the next harvest of nuts and new souls.
Remember that fall when the Pope
flew direct to Denver from El Paso
in his private airplane, overlooking
New Mexico and disappointing
all the pious Nuevomexicanos?
Seeking consolation for himself,
he orders the pilot to fly low
to catch a glimpse of villages,
and their quaint adobe chapels,
mountains and forests in between.
—“Look at all of the New Mexicans
kneeling under the trees in prayer!
I should have visited them too…”
—“Not even, your Holiness,”
says his Chicano aide,
—“sólo están pepenando piñón /
they are just picking piñón.”
Read more poems, essays, insights, and stories from Enrique R. Lamadrid—and see more gorgeous paintings by Jim Vogel—in this exclusive, limited-edition hardcover printing of HEARTS IN MOTION, HEARTS IN PLACE.
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About the Author
Enrique R. Lamadrid is a borderlands literary and bio-regional folklorist from Albuquerque and the Río Arriba, fascinated with natural histories in Mexicano and Nuevomexicano oral traditions, ethno-ornithology, and ethnotaxonomies. He was a professor of Spanish at Northern New Mexico College in Española and at the University of New Mexico. He is co-founder of the UNM Conexiones programs that have connected hundreds of students to northern and central Mexico, Spain, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. He is the Querencias Series editor at UNM Press.