Racing Rotation
A bomber with four wing
propellers lumbered over the pass,
slid down the canyon, putting a hawk
back in the air. Eyes shaded with
a swollen hand, I watched it tilt
so the pilot and I could see
each others’ pale faces.
His shadow rippled over the waterhole,
kicking birds high.
Rabbits ducked.
Shell casings litter this ground
where Indians once camped and line
shell trails to the Gulf, become
trails of the present
adding to the past
for some unimagined future,
equal to rock cracked by fire
and dry bones,
flakes of flint.
In another lifetime I would be a pilot
of fighter jets tracing earth’s contours
at one hundred feet,
racing rotation.
.
orphan poems 