Stopped on the high east rim
    of Johnson Mesa,
    you can see golden grasslands
    caressing
    volcano country.
    A place where buffalo died
    long ago, near Folsom
    so men could eat,
    women might play hide and seek
    among the cutbank arroyos.
    A place where white fossil bones
    first taught pioneer America about stones and extinction.
    Bison still speaks
    in the bated growl
    of Capulin Volcano,
    its last roar
    just ten thousand years
    ago.
    The rusty red cinder cones
    poke up through the bones
    covered by golden grasslands,
    lumenieres ever ready
    to torch
    hubris
    human.