The moon is rising over her tombstone in the dirt
Right above the land where she felt love and bitter hurt
The wind upon the hillside wields a dry November knife
And everyone beside her she had known for all her life
The crosses there are etched with dates so similar and short
Just next to the chapel where she prayed and sought support
Diseases came in waves back then till medicine arrived
It took two-thirds the town, somehow she narrowly survived
Among tumbleweeds
And yucca flowers
Is a town of crows
On decaying towers
The inheritors
Despite our powers
Will someday own
What once was ours
Her father mined for silver by the upper Rio Grande
Bringing home whatever he could carry in his hand
It kept the skillet greasy but the illness came upstream
And iodine was matchless for a fever so extreme
The first one got her mother, then her sisters and her son
The next one got the clergy and the shopkeep and a nun
Houses of adobe all abandoned in a row
The tombstones they were multiplying in North New Mexico
Among tumbleweeds
And yucca flowers
Is a town of crows
On decaying towers
The inheritors
Despite our powers
Will someday own
What once was ours
The only daughter that she had survived along with her
They tamed the land as best it would by horse and silver spur
A daughter saw a mother who was slowing to a crawl
A mother saw a daughter who was soon to have it all
The snow would melt and fall again as years they came and went
The town with tombstone crosses never tried to reinvent
On Día de los Muertos she would climb up on the hill
And watch the sunset hit the graveyard like it always will
Among tumbleweeds
And yucca flowers
Is a town of crows
On decaying towers
The inheritors
Despite our powers
Will someday own
What once was ours
What once was ours
What once was ours
What once was ours
