Trees Dream of Water

Born in 1950 in ChacÓn, New Mexico, Leo Romero is considered a foundational figure of Latino letters. Since 1988, Romero has been a bookseller in Santa Fe, New Mexico, having had five different bookstores in five different locations. His current bookstore is Books of Interest. Romero has published six books of poetry and one book of short fiction, and he has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, was a Pushcart Prize winner, and a Helene Wurlitzer Foundation resident.

• Foreword by Joy Harjo Introduction by Rigoberto GonzÁlez DURING THE GROWING SEASON (1978)I Hear the Mare Neigh If There Was Moonlight No Stars No Stars You Listen to the Chickens Not of the Soil Red Dress Way of the Falling Rain ChacÓn and Rain Comanchito Lullaby What Trees Dream About Past Placitas There’s the House We Slept on the Porch The Road to Waldo As Celso Tells It Mentiras Yaqui Indian Blood Her Name Is Morning Letter to Erlinda Hitchhiking Green Something or Other in Kansas If We Got Married AGUA NEGRA (1981) In the RincÓn Benediction Tree The Goat’s Cry Estafiate Too Many Years Agua Negra A Shadow Which Could Be Anything The Silent Bell The Trees on the Hillside Augustina Weaving the Rain A Lying Moon and a Lonely Bird This Dark Winter Leaving Vegas There Is the Wind My Mother Listens One Day Before Christmas Before We Had an Icebox Artificial Flowers CELSO (1980) (1985) Celso Was Born Celso’s Father The Moon and Angels Ash Wednesday Holy Water The Miracle A Thousand Angels Angel Hair Estrellita’s Lips Una CanciÓn de Flores Triste, Triste Son The Dead Are Dancing A Dying Flower for His Heart This Bitterness The Sorrowful Madonna Because the Moon Is a Woman Job Visits Celso Celso’s Dream Celso Talking to the Moon One Night as Celso Santiago, Since I Turned Sixty There Was a Time GOING HOME AWAY INDIAN (1990)Going Home Away He Was Dancing the Yellow Dance He Didn’t Like Me It Was in 1856 In His Dreams Skeleton Indian Marilyn Monroe Indian Skeleton Indian, He’s the Talk I Ever See You Yellow Blouse Woman Skeleton Indian Thinks Skeleton Indian Was a Navajo Here Comes Skeleton There’s Nothing Worse Head Blown Off That’s John Colley He Was Approached Who Was He Welcome, Says Skeleton Raymundo Raymundo, Say You Love Me Note from the Author SAN FERNANDEZ BEAT (1992)Ginsberg’s on the Phone Again Next Time I Come to Visit Mr. Martinez Is Quite a Character “How Do You Do It?” I Ask Mr. Martinez Always Has Alfred’s on the Phone Again Contents ix Alfred, If I Don’t Find Him I Drop In on Alfred As Poets Get Older They I’m Invited I Keep Wondering When Fulgenzi Alfred’s Getting Famous Dream of Old Peruvian Days I Wake Up 000 Alfred’s Turned Artist, Not Note from the Author BEYOND NAGEEZI1.I Have Come a Long Way Datura I Wander in the Desert I Hesitate Before a Severed Each Second Lengthens the Distance The Cactus Have Taken Steps I Walk Out into the Desert Flowers Blooming I Moved to the Desert She Picked the Cactus 2.Between Yeso and Fort Sumner Clovis End of the Columbus Day Weekend For Miles There Is Nothing Slower Than Anything What Was There to Do on the Plains Tonight the Moon Is Lost We Looked Under the Sofa Cushions You Loved to Dance Waltzing 3.At Night These There Is an Ancient Belief I Climbed a High Hill I Stepped Outside Walking Down Spiders Scurry A Few Heavy Raindrops 4.In the Late Afternoon I Opened My Window Clouds Are Moving The Wind Is Knocking Winter Has Arrived After the Sun Sets I Follow Dark Winter Birds Scraping Off the Ice Moon and River 5.Drawing Up the Blinds Yesterday As I Drove Past Seeing You from a Distance When You Were Living Walking Through the Forest Returning to Los Alamos The Night Pulsates 6.Another Cold Night Was It Fall 000 You’re in the Yard7.Chaco Canyon The Mountains Call Me I Skirt the Bisti There Is No Sound Here Silence Exists Here Beyond Nageezi For Lame Deer (Sioux Medicine Man) A Remembered Dream: Thoughts on Becoming a Writer Acknowledgments

“Now, here we are, with a classic collection, by one of the most important poets of his time and place. Stop and listen to the remembered dream of a generation, a life, the edge of a flowering desert in time.”—Joy Harjo, from the foreword“Leo Romero—a poet of short line, scenes of daily life, sun, mountain, tree, and moon in northern New Mexico—stands singular. Dreams come to life when you listen to the roots, notice leaves, seeds, and the movement of all beings, things, underground and above. A most valuable text, illuminating and embracing moments rarely spoken or revealed.”—Juan Felipe Herrera, emeritus poet laureate of the United States and author of Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems  “Poetry is ageless because of time. Memory is back when, and today is now. Time is both past and present. Decades ago are decades later. Time is still ageless, more or less. I met Leo in the late 1960s. . . . And I vividly remember telling myself: this young Chicano guy Romero is a poet and a soothsayer. Watch out. And he was and is.”—Simon J. Ortiz, author of Light As Light  “A luminous journey across a life of poetry, Leo Romero offers a profound work full of life, communion, and connection to land and community.”—Santiago  Vaquera-VÁsquez, author of Nocturno de frontera  “Trees Dream of Water is a captivating ride through memory, identity, and life in northern New Mexico. Leo Romero’s mastery of language and deep connection to his heritage shines through in every poem. The poems are deeply personal and universally resonant. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of culture, nature, and the art of poetry. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand loss and the search for belonging.”—Ruben Quesada, author of Brutal Companion  “Deeply rooted in New Mexico, Leo Romero’s poems are honed to simplicity and transform situations and narratives into myth. Following no trend but staying true to his inner compass, Leo Romero has created a poetry that is humble, moving, and thrilling to the core.”—Arthur Sze, author of The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems  “Listening to Leo Romero’s story-anecdote-half-whispered poems can be like breaking into an old-fashioned rural phone party line and catching soulful fragments pulled from the deepest melancholy of this haggard region. Impeccably modest, conversationally incomplete, painfully personal, sometimes his unpretentious glimpses of family, friends, the intimacies of mountain hamlet life, carry an authenticity I have never experienced in words before. Born of an almost forgotten northern New Mexican experience, they are akin to magic, they are how Chicano history might actually sound were it allowed to speak for itself. Leo Romero is the region’s living treasure.”—Peter Nabokov, author of Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places  “In this moving retrospective, Romero’s poems take us into the rural Southwest—its people, flora and fauna, indelible landscapes. Whether the perspective is from the poet-self or a persona, the journey is deep and lonesome, forged by history and ancestry, reflected in the ‘the throbbing / of the mountains / The slow breathing of trees . . . the uneasiness / of the fields.’”—Valerie MartÍnez, author of Count