she breathes life into his lazarus heart

she breathes life into his lazarus heart        
          
     My hands grip the wheel with religious fervor. The morning miles take my beloved and me deeper into the land of enchantment where mesas rise like tables upon which our feast of beauty is to begin.  
     Rowena takes her window down and leans her head into the wind making her hair scatter in the breeze. She smiles as we veer off the main stretch onto the back roads. Our junket takes us through ancient Spanish towns. In Mora, a group of men pushes a car across the road and we onlookers gaze in wonder on our pause. The jalopy yields to their strength as it rolls to its destination at the repair shop across the highway.  
     Rowena says, “Love where your inner map is taking us.”  
     “You are the muse for my poem in motion.”  
     We dip and swerve into unexpected vistas. Having left the desert mesas we find ourselves in a land of fir trees on gentle slopes. Soon we follow a roaring river upward and onward into lodgepole pines where the water takes us to its source.  
     We seek a golden moment for lost adobe whose  
tremble of history echoes under the colored chalk of sky on the southern spine of a Sangre De Cristo where no blood of Christ flows among the clear mountain streams.  
     New Mexican snowfields open up in alpine country. My head pounds in the thin air but with the dawning reality of altitude sickness. I ask,   “Rowena, is your head hurting?”  
     She nods, “No.” Altitude sickness is upon me but my wife is fit as a fiddle.  
     I take the driver’s seat once more but am soon to abdicate my throne. We follow the highway into snowy hills on our alpine trek. We cross the ridge into a canyon where my nauseous head swims in a sea of pain. And so the time has come for Rowena to lead this expedition. I tell her to find a motel. As we cross the Taos city limits I turn the car over to her. She finds shelter for my heavy head.  
     For three days I am bedridden. She navigates a strange city whose streets she knows not to bring us food until my throbbing head finds peace under her gentle touch. I am very very proud of my lady who found her way on streets unknown.  
     She brings a lunch of tofu rice pilaf. “Taos has more health food stores than conventional grocery ones. This is my kind of place. Let’s settle down here and grow old dining on barbeque tempeh.”  
      “I was fortunate to have recovered. You know altitude sickness can rob you of your golden years.”  
     “Spoken by a man who was a Colorado mountain goat in his youth. You were made for the mountains.”  
    “You are being strong for me.”  
     “For both of us actually. Why didn’t you have me drive us to a lower altitude? That is the textbook solution for altitude sickness.”  
     “It was getting toward dusk when the mountain spirits haunt drivers.”  
     “I believe those are benevolent ghosts who guide travelers safely.”  
     “I am very proud of you for keeping a cool head in my time of deepest need.”  
     “Outwardly yes. But I didn’t want to lose you. That is what drove me to find the nourishment you needed. I didn’t fancy driving home through the lonely Texas panhandle without you to keep my tears at bay.”  
     “It was no worse than a migraine.”  
     “But Tylenol is like a sugar pill for what you had. And the potential for hemorrhaging had me catastrophizing.”  
     “Perhaps we belong in the southerly region of the heart where Patagonia lies.”  
     “Even Tierra Del Fuego isn’t far enough away for us.”