Visions in Thunderbird Park

The dirt is so soft to grow such unfathomable thorns.
Out of the mounds of living earth
come cactus knives, blood-edged stones,
deathlike shrubs
with tines that hold the sun
on branches unbalanced like check marks
that inch across the sand like a snake.



Barrel cactus
like some headdress for some giant reddish tribe,
and woolen poles that blow like beards of long-forgotten wars,
brown bolts of fur on snake-bone lollipop sticks.


Ashen wood bouquets open
in charred rock interstices.
Old limbs turn the dusky silt
of rivers carved in stone.


The cholla always dancing always freezing when you look.


The first sajuaro, like a crucifix at the apex of the hill.


What unknown was seen,
what unheard was felt
is recorded on the stones:
they are punctured and broken,
veined with blue or pink or black,
like coal to shine in the sun.
Once separated from the earth, now one.


A quail shrieks, a few things remain:
a dead branch of a mustard color,
an ivory crown of thorns,
dried pods pomegranate red.

The stripes of late afternoon
stretch through the foot-high forests
leafless at first umber, when slants of light
ravish patches of rolling, rising stalks.


The golden hills in golden sun, unspeakable
except in snags of creosote,
and patterns from the cliffside’s ragged shade.

From granite hills a turquoise sky with blue smoke ridge horizons,
a hundred thousand off-brown houses lying in between.