Puffy White And Hazy Gray Clouds Float Poem by Ron Stock

Melody and I live on a sagebrush mesa 12 miles west of Taos, New Mexico. On one side of our open, two-car yellow-pine garage is a nest with four beautiful Mountain Bluebird chicks. On the other side, another nest is filled with five baby Say's Phoebies. The two mother birds have been feeding these baby chicks for over two weeks.
The poet makes every decision in pursuit of a poem; what direction to drive, what hill to climb, what tree to kiss, what canyon to enter. It's June, I'm 3 miles west of our house on the crown of a rolling landscape of sage, juniper, and piñon pine. An occasional black volcanic rock dots the terrain. I'm standing on a wide, tongue-shaped precipice of mesa encircled on three sides by the deep Arroyo Aguaje de la Petaca, a dry riverbed with a narrow ribbon of sand winding through more sagebrush. The overbearing midday sun is at it's apex. I have patience for an overbearing sun. I have no patience for an overbearing bully. I'm looking for the body, bones, or whatever remains, of a murdered woman.
He, was once a cute, feisty, blond-haired little boy with a long straight nose and intense dark eyes, born and raised in St. John Baptist Parish northwest of New Orleans. She, a precious little girl with large doughy brown eyes and auburn hair from Horseshoe Bay near Austin. He, at 40, was a felon with cold eyes and a long record of arrest, including a string of DWI's. She, at 36, a former high school beauty queen and United States Marine, who for some unknown reason was attracted to dangerous men. He was a dangerous man.
Did he, have, an overbearing mother like so many serial killers I've read about; a Mom so twisted by the Word of Jesus she invented her own interpretation of Christian love?
Did she, become, the seductive temptress who teased and loved grown men like they were little boys in a surging, downward spiral of compassionate passion, passion, lust?
I do not know the answers to these questions. I do know the man picked the woman up at her home for the last time on that cold, wet January night in the dead of winter at 7200 feet in the southern Rockies, drove to maybe this same bluff, and with the help of one of the woman's own lovers, beat her into submission, and while she lay helpless, wrapped his Jeep winch around her neck and dragged her, backwards, through the sagebrush.
I walk down a steep slope into the meandering Petaca, the sun blasting, with no breeze between the steep canyon walls. I seek shade, drink, rest. No-see-ems attack my face, arms, legs. Now, a drove of flies. Then, two white butterflies drift by, one in pursuit. My eyes slowly dance up the black rock wall to a crisp cerulean blue sky. Puffy white and hazy gray clouds float. As I lower my gaze, something catches my eye. A blooming magenta cactus. When I turn, the unmistakable stench of death violates my nostrils. I approach the smell and see a rotting blue sleeping bag lying in a heap. I shudder, but resist the temptation to walk down the canyon. I move in close. Open the flap of the bag. Step back. It's a large dog. I have not found the remains of Naomi, the murdered woman.
When I arrive home our yard is an aviary. All nine downy-feathered baby Bluebirds and Phoebies are fledglings, learning the intricacies of flight, two landing on a nearby fence, heads bobbing from side to side, curious about this new, enormous, creature in their lives.