The Zuni Mountain Poets

The Zuni Mountains have over 360,000 acres of pristine wilderness. The volcanic area of the El Malpais National Monument is riddled with great, black lava flows, caves, and lava tubes. The El Morro National Monument has writings from ancient peoples flowing backward into time, early Spanish explorers, and later American explorers near a precious pool of deep water hidden beneath towering cliffs. Throughout Plateaus, mesas. cliffs, canyons, and small mountain peaks is the pygmy forest of pion and juniper trees interspersed with pines and towering Ponderosa pines with their red bark and straight trunks. The continental divide rises and falls as it winds its way north to the great Rocky Mountains. A polygot of peoples, Zuni, Pueblo, Navajo, Spanish, and the various ethnicities of Anglos make the Zuni Mountains home.

Not all of the poems in this anthology are about the Zuni Mountains. The poets come from different places and different cultures, but the Zuni Mountains are in all the poems in this volume. Some of the poems capture the beauty of New Mexico sunlight that enlightens the human spirit in a way that sunlight in other places does not. Some are caught up by the mourning, laughter, sadness, comedy, tragedy, and endless stories that arise out of individuals living individual lives.

Zuni Mountain country is not always an easy country. The trails through ancient volcanic flows frozen into black stone can challenge the most experienced hiker. You can be walking along a ridge and suddenly become aware that a mountain lion is watching you from a sandstone outcropping above your head. But it is a beautiful, wild place where horses can still find grass in green summer meadows and elk and antelope grace Mother Earth with the fluidity of movement and magnificence of the elk's rack of horns.

The poetry in this volume arises from the Zuni Mountains, and, as such, is as dynamic, interesting, and beautiful as the country from which it comes.