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At the Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge Everybody's moaning this morning on the AM. I've cranked up the heat and the honky-tonk, and, alone at last on this Rio Grande backroad, a twangy tenor's confiding in me, Tonight I'm crossing over to the Broken Promise Land. It's 5 a.m., and already he's counting down the hours, but so mournfully you'd think he was another Moses at a scenic overlook, doomed to detour far from that lush valley. Above the mesa, turquoise makes a thin announcement: dark's closing down its bar, too, breaking up the slow dance of stars. And now an achy alto can't let go. She's headed toward that final chorus where it all comes clear— the whiskey and the weeping— but before she gets there, I find beneath my wheels the gravel I've been looking for. I cut the engine and step outside, my little hothouse of the human exhaled in the wilderness of cold. is this what always has to happen to desire? Must it go the way ofmanufactured heat and the greatest tear-jerked hits ofthe heart? I hurry through the question as I hurry the muddy path between reeds and coyote-willows, to see the snow geese, silhouettes on a plush pond. 96 They float quietly, like orphaned vowels. Then from one crude call, one hoarse proposal at the first twinge of light, they crowd quickly to a caucus of ten thousand, barking Here! Here! until the red din that warms their white down raptures them in a rush of flame and feather— uproar in which they swerve and cry and wane, doused by the horizon. But the scattered sandhill cranes stay put, thin-legged, ablaze. I try to be as still as they are, try to wade my heart deep into the wait. Then just as I start back out the way I came, a slow, elegant pair lifts, one thought at a time, into the trembling silver. —Lynn Powell 97 ...

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