Today, I am not home, but from where I am, I can see down into my valley the wall of darkness as the mountains disappear, and I know I may be returning to a rushing acequia, a muddy road. In the meantime, I look from the hospital window and wait for my daughter to recover. Her body so full of baby and hope just two weeks ago, now empty. 

Storms build and bypass, but sometimes stall just over my house and let loose, fill the cattle tanks to overflowing, wash out the headwaters of the acequia, so the ditch runs brown and heavy for days, then not at all until the mayordomo can convince enough parcientes to meet him up on the Borrego Mesa and mend the compuertas, get the water regulated again.

Nature reminds, without guilt or pleasure, all that cycles through cannot be controlled. No one’s fault that the torrential rain thundering on the roof fills the cattle tank so full that the overflow spills out onto the portal, rising to the level of the threshold.

What came knocking on her uterus, what anomaly, too much rain, too much thundering in an attempt to make a dream into a son? Now everything is washed away, and she tells me, “We’ll start again.” Writes out the invitation to fill her womb, because she needs the rain, accepts the phenomenal risk of a natural cycle. 

The clouds are all potential, and even low and dark, may bring nothing more than dry lightning and a quick wind that brings me out to pull down the garden umbrellas before they up and fly away.