The ranch is a raw
longing for sweet clover’s warm
evening scent, the
dirt of my bones, a single
nightingale’s melody
hung against Bear Butte.
Memory scraps rustle
under low branches, fragile
prayer flags falling, lifting
and falling on the stripped
plum trees in the old wash.
Little good ever came of
that damn place, haunted
by broken dreams and
madness, children
cringing and working hard,
hard hours.
Scraps and poverty … still,
this deep longing for pieces that
I never actually owned.
Not in this life.
How far we each travel
inside. Inside our long
memory, our soft eyes
remembering every star
as if in its proper place.
orphan poems 