Carmelita and Maria
burn with sorrow dressed as anger;
fire in their black-diamond eyes,
hot enough to scald tears
before they roll down
the brown lands of their faces.
Both quiver like chamisa in the dry wind
but the pride of long-suffering roots
will not concede to any withering wind.
Carmelita and Maria
are born of the same stubborn stone
as the ageless mesas around Coyote,
though pain carves arroyos in their souls.
As even the desert Rio Chama overflows
when the thirsty earth
cannot drink the rainstorm fast enough
and brings flowers in sand,
Carmelita and Maria will not admit it,
not to one another or to themselves,
but both long for the desert inside them
to blossom after the winter,
to be the sun,
each to the flower that is the other.