Where would I be today?" I am granted by dream continuing views of these other dimensions, the paths not taken.

In one, I am a silly person high in the Truchas near a clear mountain lake. Spring is in bloom and the snow still sits on the peaks not far above me. Lavender little flowers highlight a meadow of grass just tall enough to shine silver in the warm breeze. The sky is that particular blue that only exists at tree line and the few clouds are pure.

I get off my horse, a great Andalusian stallion, with pink mane and tail and green eyes. He only responds to a sung Spanish, which miraculously I have learned. I bend over to cup some water from the brook that flows from the lake to oceans I've never seen. I see my reflection, a gaunt old man who never grew the city paunch. My skin is leathery from love of the weather, with enormous crows feet from worshipping the sun. My hair is white and rust bleached from our star, tied with a leather thong with beads of amber. It's never been cut and hangs far below my butt. I also sport a mustache of monstrous size, a braided Fu Manchu, trimmed at my chest with tiny turquoises and porcupine quill. An eagle claw earring warns the spirits.

I rest myself on a rounded gray boulder and straighten my right leg with my boot heel on another small piedra. Behind me is a chunk of Jemez lava with mysterious petroglyphs I can't decipher but know what they mean. My horse grazes calmly with reins down. The sun finds the remaining bright steel on my rusted spur and glints a giggle. My boot is wrapped in duct tape holding hide and sole together. It is warm in the sun and I take off my battered hat.

I take out my tobacco and begin to roll a cigarette. Just as I'm about to tongue the glue a black mare with three white stockings and a star blaze runs out from the aspens. She stops and sees me. At a gentle trot she comes toward me. She dismounts with a soft hop. I look at her and the bare horse 'cept the braided rawhide bosal and its tender ropes. She looks at me, and answers without words, this mare won't take to the bit.

I take her extended hand and rise. We walk to the lake and bathe in its snowmelt water young trout shimmer in the light, a surrealistic day of stars. We scrub each other with sand and gravel. Then heat each other on the sun warm grass perfumed by the wild flowers. I laugh and she cries. It must sound like coyotes to the elk. She looks down eyes alight with one tear track, a Mardi Gras marking, on her soft cheek.

I lay taking in the radiance. She turns away and dresses facing the Aspen. I want to see her face. She mounts the mare without turning and rides back into the forest.

I dress and resume my pose taking up the cigarette and lighting it with a kitchen match. The sulfur smell is familiar and pleasant. I smile and think, what a wondrous gift, a broken heart.