Toronto, a suitcase

In a city of towers and streetcars and snow
lived Cristina, who said, "I have somewhere to go."
She packed up her sunglasses, her shoes made for strolls,
packed seventeen roosters (she packs them in bowls),
and she put on the cap with the leaf, and she grinned,
and she went out the door like a kite in the wind.

Denver, the daughter, the car

In Denver was Rita, her hat on her head,
with a car full of snacks and a map that she'd read.
"We're heading down south," Rita said. "Buckle in.
There's a pass and a valley, and then we begin."
And they drove, and they drove, and the mountains stood tall,
and a rooster rode shotgun and crowed at them all.

The line on the map

Then somewhere past nothing, the road gave a hop,
and the sky got so big that it never would stop.
The hills turned the colour of cinnamon toast,
the clouds went to pieces like fluff on a post,
and a rock shaped like somebody's uncle went by,
and Cristina said, "Rita. Who painted the sky?"

The fruit stands at Velarde

There were stands by the road with their apples in rows,
and the chiles hung down in long ropes to your toes,
red ones and green ones and some in between,
the reddest, the greenest, that ever you've seen.
"Red or green?" asked the man. And Cristina said, "Both!"
(Which is Christmas down here, and a wonderful oath.)
And a rooster got out and went looking for kin
among all the ristras. They let him back in.

The Hacienda

That night in a house made of earth and of sun
with a fireplace as round as a fat little bun,
they sat in the window and looked at the hills,
and the fire went pop and the wind found the sills,
and a skull with two horns on the wall gave a grin,
and Cristina said, "Rita. I fit right on in."

The birthday, the blue door

The morning her birthday came up with the sun,
she was up before it, for that's how it is done.
They drove up a valley of cliffs red and gold
to a house with a blue door, a hundred years old,
where a painter once lived with her bones and her sky.
And Rita went quiet. And Cristina knew why.
(Her hands learned the clay in a studio, small,
that her mother had found her. That started it all.)

The ladders

There's a canyon with ladders that go up and up
past rooms in the rock where a family grew up.
"You climb," said the daughter. "You're first, if you can."
And Cristina went up like a goat with a plan,
and she stood at the top with her arms open wide
and she hollered, "Toronto! Look up! I'm outside!"

The origami garden

And out in a garden of sagebrush and stone
stood cranes made of metal, all folded and grown,
and flowers of paper as tall as a tree.
"Do they fly?" "Not on purpose." "Well, good. Let them be."
And a lizard ran by, and a Zoomeroo too,
and Cristina said, "Rita. Is this even true?"

Santa Fe

There's a town on a hill that is painted like bread,
with turquoise in windows and chile in red,
and a plaza for wandering round and around,
a museum of flowers that grow off the ground.
She looked at one flower the size of a wall
and she said, "That one's got some nerve, after all."

The hot springs

Then a river of steam in a canyon of tan,
where you soak till you're soup, which was always the plan.
Two heads in the water, two hats on a rock,
and the stars coming out with no clock and no knock.
"This is nice," said Cristina, and then not a word.
Which, for her, is the highest review ever heard.

Home, the long way

And then it was homeward, past valley and snow,
with the roosters, the turquoise, the chile in tow.
"I'd not been to New Mexico. Now I have been."
"So next year?" said the daughter. "Next year, we'll do green."
And the car did a hop, and the sky did a swirl,
and the mountains all waved at the mother and girl.

The last page

So here's to the lady who's up for the strolls
and says yes to the ladders and yes to the bowls,
who came a whole country to see what she'd see,
with her eighteen roosters (one more than before),
and a table in Denver, and Matthew at the door.
Happy birthday, Cristina. With love, from us three.