Like the desert dirt – useless –
Finds room for its own – lizards.
The sticks have become bones.
The tumbleweeds wait like haystacks – rough
Becoming – the bushes shadowed with suffering –
The sporadic green screaming and shuddering –
The bleached out sea of sameness of the hollow trees
Who say “there’s nothing there” as if it’s the wind –
The cactus bulbs like bruises, wasting away,
So small they seem, together in such light –
Lone yellow daisies plea for love with such plangency –
The shade blanket dapples the spikes
While the dry bush glows with intent –
Black seeds repeat the day’s frequencies
In a kind of efflorescent death.
Lower and redder, it’s known now by the thistles
Explosive as twilight,
The leafless tufts dangerous,
The bare trees like blood vessels –
The humps and tracks and ridges come to life
As if to grieve what never was.
Then the sun, as if responding
Turns on a symphony of pity
For all it couldn’t say before,
When it said it all,
What the mountains of blue smoke now repeat
Without even knowing.
