Poem

Supernaturalness

When you cross the Animas Mountains in the morning,
if you want to keep their peace along your way,
let me offer you—time traveler—a warning:
you must let the past and future fade away.

Pay no mind to double-talking apparitions
who will claim to have control over your fate.
They’ll revive your old regrets and superstitions
and attempt to make you doubt and hesitate.

And when shadows let you know your day is over,
if you follow as they travel with the night,
in the disappearing lands you will uncover
your new world of sound illusions and insight.

Luis Verano

L.V. is a professor of Romance languages at the University of Oregon. About the setting of his poem, he writes:

The Animas Mountains, in southern Hidalgo County in the southwestern corner of New Mexico, extend for about thirty miles along the Continental Divide. They include desert, grassland, juniper and oak woodlands, dense conifer areas, riparian zones, perennial watercourses, and springs. A very wide diversity of bird species, mammals and reptiles breed here. Even jaguars are occasionally seen within the Animas. The largest part of the range is within the 300,000-acre Diamond A Ranch, which includes land previously known as the Gray Ranch. The Diamond A was purchased in 1990 by The Nature Conservancy, and since then, the Hadley Family—a long-time family of ranchers—formed the Animas Foundation that now manages the land, preserving and maintaining its natural beauty in harmony with the environment.