Noon to moon the desert bakes:
time-greyed tumbleweeds roll like Eastwood’s
spaghetti westerns. Three hundred sixty degrees of sky
stretch thunderously empty. Roads, where they exist,
dance with wind-swirled dust, and boulders hunker.
Mountains stained purple with distance rise
in uneven rows, outlined in eye-aching luminescence
until sun becomes an all-encompassing white ball.
Rio Grande maintains its bi-lingual fluency.
Pumas and mule deer leave prints
destined to relate their history in layers of rock.
The canyon steeps in stillness; a single twisted tree
clinging to its edge, basket of root resisting the abyss,
digs in its toes, hangs on. I think
of that bristlecone pine named Methuselah –
five thousand years old; can this one be younger?
Evening sunset paints the land gold and magenta;
stars unfettered by city light display the milky way
against a black-diamond sky. Lightning walks
on spindly legs, but no aroma of wet creosote,
flashes only tantalize, leave dust. I toss sage
on the fire’s hot coals, breathe purifying smoke,
solitude complete as I listen for the hollow plaintive
of distant coyotes.
Eventually the moon emerges;
this desolate landscape grows even more alien,
grotesque. I drift off, cocooned in my sleeping bag.
Dallas is but a fairytale as the lunar disc pales to silver
and slides from the sky.
