Muggy Day in the High Desert

Clouds like a Portuguese man'o'war
In a place too close to the sky

I hide on a mountainside
The birds, for once, cry (as they do in China)

Ocotillo like steel ganglia are stuffed between bruised stones
A chipmunk scales a barrel cactus, looks, and hops back down

I see only clouds above, and below,
Just people lining barren streets with gold

Black-pocked sajuaro fingers point
At the growing yellow smoke that resists the mountain's bowl

What is it in me that wants this myth,
To find my home in spines and sea beds?

Is God an entertainment, like a junkie’s flame
Spiraling an inch above the wax?

The sun peeks through the grey, briefly,
And I am at one, again, with the mountain

The wind resounds in an abandoned plastic bottle
The way sleep calls to one from its separate world