My Life in Prose and Poetry

Arroyo is a Spanish word that translates to brook; a wash or ‘crik’ as the cowboys refer to it down here on the desert. It is usually bone-dry, a ‘dry stream’ if you will; but water still flows below the surface during the dry times, as with our historic San Pedro river. Often dry, by God’s grace, our arroyos will flow full, bank to bank after long-awaited rain fall, our great monsoons! We desperately need those rains and flowing arroyos for our survival as they fill our subterranean aquifers. We have an arroyo that runs across our beloved home ranch – Rancho Ryan! It flows right under an old Shaggy Bark Juniper that’s estimated to be 1200 to 1500years old by a tenured Professor Arborist from the University of New Mexico.

My poetry, while written more recently, has often flowed following periods of spiritual dryness or hard trials and tribulations, like my treasured monsoon rains. And I’ve often written during the bountiful times, the Monsoons of grace in my life. There is no ‘on/off’ button for my writing, just as there is none for our desperately awaited monsoon rains. I leave on and off buttons to the Holy Spirit and to nudges from the world around me. I pray my writings bring spiritual waters to your life.