Tag Archives: desert

114. Driving to La Arena

One skull knocks against 

the door frame and both dogs

are on their feet, braced through 

arroyos of rocks climbing up 

tires, those aggressive new tires.

Water bags leap and

a cairn creeps past, a trail

spotted like footprints by hooves

of dry cattle crosses.

 

Ocotillo reach right in so

one dog snaps.

Creosote arms swing trying to

reach right in. One dog snaps

and my cigarette swerves.

A hawk spins, black

tips on blue sky like

periods allowed to 

soar across the page,

 

like following this track

nowhere.

 

Sand fills horizon lines with gold.

110. The Diner

the car

parked during the night

holds 

one corpse.

 

startled her 

half out of her skin

in the morning half light.

the door was unlocked.

 

across the long highway

is a phone tacked up

on a power pole

catching two hundred

miles of wind 

with its sharp corners.

sometimes the phone 

works.

 

thirty-two miles north

in town

the ringing

woke a sheriff.

 

by eight he was gone,

the corpse

leaving tire tracks

of the coronor’s rig.

 

all that’s left here

is the woman’s nerves

strung taut between sage.

all that’s left here

is the end of a man’s story

rolling across three ranches

like a tumbleweed.

69. Stars

Stars skip out over the black branches

of screwbean mesquite, catalyzing

coyotes hungry for a breeze,

a rabbit, each other.

.

I would guide your hand across my body

star to star and between each

we would be one in one space.

If you were here I would,

to hear your breath catch

to taste the desert dust

crushed creosote and wolfberries

and the sweat-salt of hunger

hot on our cracked lips.

I would tenderly swing my body

in an arc as wide as Sonoran horizons

to include all of you in my passion,

quiet as midday, bold as midnight

and strong as both

in joined silence.

.

Creosote blooms leak notes the desert air

hangs all the other notes from 

to weld a symphony.

.

55. night of the moon crater

In the slipcover of sand dust

I sleep.

Between the down of insect’s wings

I sleep.

Under the spring quilt of stars

I sleep heavily,

one slippery breeze

stealing its caresses.

.

A coyote craving a bite off water

of the cool tinaja

sweats a trail across basalt,

toenails snapping quietly.

Tender calls of the owl drift

up the arroyo rock to rock,

shift darkness aside by

translation echo.

Bats toss whole lives with one

dip of wing

teaching fighter pilots to dream

each instant complete.

.

Between a slipcover of desert dew

I wake.

Under the warm down of sunlight particles

I wake.

In the palm of an ochre dune

curved to cradle hips 

I wake

slowly,

one slippery breeze

stealing a last long caress.