Jewish Ancestry

Visiting my aunt, long ago
filtering through the sepia
and black and white photographs
I saw a small woman in a white cotton dress

trimmed with lace. She stood behind
a man sitting in a large wooden chair.
She looked like the ancestors I knew
with fair skin of Spanish ancestry

mixed with the features of the Isleta tribe.
Her house, on the family acres of grazing lands
home to hundreds of sheep and goats

now with her new husband, a shepherd,
dressed in black,
with a wide flat brimmed hat

a long beard and two long curls
on either side of his head.

Captured in time without words
no explanation for their appearance

genealogists suggest that Jews
fled to New Mexico to avoid
the inquisition, blending in

to the new culture as much as they could.
Local residents were unaware of world politics

so they allowed the new comer
to become part of the culture
in the landscape of mesas and tumbleweeds.