Monthly Archives: April 2021

From Jeanne:
A year ago, Jack was in the hospital, and I’m trying to not think about that a whole lot, but anniversaries of significant events are hard to ignore.
One reason I am the luckiest person in the world is that I have a lot of recordings that Jack made. Some of them are our conversations, some are hospital commentary, lots are gratitude affirmations in which he covers most of the major events and people of his life, and some are of him reciting poetry.
I thought I’d share one recording with you which he made when he got the most recent voice recorder and was trying it out for the first time. He talks about what was going on in the world when he was born in 1943 and mentions a few details of very early childhood before he touches on a sad memory which makes him abruptly stop the recording. It’s a little over 6 minutes long. It’s an MP3 file which can be accessed by clicking “download” on the linked page.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/efnbszg1bx07cj7/Intro+Jack+Purcell+1943.mp3/file

Jack wrote this in April, 2005:

It’s a beautiful day here, aside from the normal New Mexico spring wind. From the porch I can see the Rio Grande’s having it worse than here, lots of dirt in the air. But just below this old house the only road that could take a person anywhere besides downhill and out to civilization heads East into the mountain. It’s been closed since the first snowfall, but I was feeling some cabin fever. Thought I might just be able to get through the pass above here into the East Mountains.

About 2/3 to the top I found it wasn’t to be. Packed snow still thick enough to stop traffic, maybe for another month.

On the way back down, stopped and hiked around a while just to listen to the streams running and smell the trees. It was good. All that water heading west, probably thinks California’s heaven. It wouldn’t be in such a hurry if it knew where it’s really going. First it has the desert between here and the Rio Grande, where a lot of it will vanish off to a parallel universe. Then, if it behaves in the normal manner, it will have to take a hard left turn into the Rio Grande, take a bath in the effluent from the Albuquerque sewer systems, then meander on south and east into Texas.

Not what it was expecting at all, I’m betting. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get down the mountain.

Near the base of the mountain on a cliff wall about three miles up the road from here is the Sandia Man Cave. Stopped to fool around there a bit, think about those old outdoorsy guys up there in that cave, figuring how they’d be fairly ecstatic winter is over and they could get out of all those animal skins.

Sandia Man Cave was the home of some early people, maybe 12,000 years ago. Folsum/Midland Era. That cave was the place where the gnawed bones of the latest mammoth in New Mexico were found. The folks there were evidently dedicated to improving the environment for the sake of those of us now by killing off the last of the mega-fauna around here.

Lucky thing, too. I hate to think what those sabre toothed tigers and mammoths would do to pet dogs and orchards.

Jack

Twenty miles from nowhere
On a desert autumn road
It caught my eye
Drove another mile
And turned around
To look again
And wonder

Mile Marker 20

Vieja rattles truck
Worn loose and wrinkled
Pickup and woman
Two alike
Too alike.

Youngest son of 20
Sullen, pockmarked
Central Avenue of Duke
Comes around to steal her change
And vanish.

Middle daughter
Just 20 miles away
Her man hates
No calls, no visits
No joy smile of grandson
Nothing

Man dead
These 20 years
Whiskey mind rocketed
Car rocketed
Life rocketed
Into concrete
Just over there.

Oldest son locked away
Seven years of twenty
In Las Lunas
Today she visits
Carton of smokes
And twenty bucks
Saved hard
To ease his gone.

Flash inside her head
Inside the years
Inside the cab
Brakes
Wheel wrenched right
Fingers locked white
Stalks circles
Three times around the truck
Eyes down
Sees nothing

Tin, tape, a marking pen
A steel post cry
To everything that wasn’t.

MISSED

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell