Las Cruces

Years ago, during a cross country driving trip to a writing fellowship Robbie Kaye drove through Bryce Canyon, leaving it, in awe. She left the canyon and passed a large white cross standing on the hill of the median. In big black letters it read, “Saturday Warrior.”

Mesmerized by the sight of that cross, she continued on the highway for several miles and then a feeling came over her. The intrigue was too strong, and she had to turn around and go back for this hauntingly beautiful marking. 

So many questions ran through her mind: who did this cross belong to? 

Why was it there? What is their story?

As a songwriter Robbie had written many songs while driving in her car and whenever she had driven long distances, she kept a notebook close by for journaling. 

After seeing these crosses, Las Cruces, the words flowed as she created fictionalized voices from the crosses. Poem and poem. By the time she reached her first destiny in New York she had completed twenty-one poems of fictionalized voices coming from beneath the earth. Voices of death. Big death. She contemplated the small deaths she had experienced in her own life by that time.

That trip was seventeen years ago. In her travels since that first road trip, she continues to notice crosses and photograph them. Each time she sees another cross – in Hawaii, California, Arizona, any roadside – she pauses. Takes note. Acknowledges.  Robbie sees it as an occasion to ask herself: “where am I in my life?”

This sign of death calls to mind little deaths. The unexpected changes: 

the fragility of life.

Robbie Kaye takes a photograph in reverence.