Welcome, said rocks
And dead things to the living; they’re playing
That musical suite again, red on green
In a bronze key.
When the sunlight comes, the white brush
Emerges to meet it, the bared mountains
Shake off their dapples, the cholla hums
With its glow, the sagebrush is brushed
with translucence.
The clouds retain some of the night,
Some of the crystalline stars that hold
Their solidity long after the eyes are closed,
Now woven like threads across the light.
The many textures of sand take shape
As it's swept to the foreground with its
Swirls holding shadow like a trance.
Then the sun explodes across the landscape,
Exposing all the hieroglyphs
Dense with captured truth
That seem to fly from place to place
Instead of holding still forever,
But there it is.
The creosote branches, so seemingly
Wild and grey, turn thoughts
Like sages, with a hint of blue,
That turns the branches purple,
A glow that gives away that there’s
Too much to experience and to say.
Flash flood water is pouring down the hills
With gills, elephant brown and frothy as life,
Making the desert run, its tiny trail of silver,
Because it is the only thing that moves,
Can dominate the mighty granite mountains.
The foam splays onto the golden alluvial plain
Guided by the stones, who connect to all
That passed within the flow as it went over …
This gives way to jagged edges of salt
And a few trees gnarled with green, in full
Wind-tossed release, who stand like oracles,
Flecked with the thought of clouds, ignored
But wise in communion with the wise white stones
Humped up against the black wash of sky,
Holding to their shapes on the scrub hills
As the pockmarked, sunbaked metal rocks
Maintain their positions as well, on falling sides
That slide eternally downward and divided,
But the truth calls even if we don’t know
How it gets through the stone’s sheen
And cracked grandeur.
So many grey and white and black and brown
Essences lying around as if limp and helpless –
Though mountains jettison boulders over edges
When no longer needed, if we throw them it is
Because they not we decide.
When no longer needed, if we throw them it is
Because they not we decide.
The breeze makes everything easier,
This torture of the sun and its knowledge,
The prickliness of the leafless others
Sending out their nerves, all are soothed
By the greasewood odors, that reminds
How the desert keeps its secrets as it shares.
It wears the mien of the dead, but the tiniest
Things move, the glistening webs, the individual
Mesquite leaves, all of a piece of this symphony
Of sun and wind and water, collected in the
Water’s churn, as the desert poplar, also filled
With sun and wind and water, sings alongside
The stream, though so mingled with the sound
Its silence is what is heard.
The distance lies in turquoise,
And the clouds streak with mauve
At the end of the play of blue and grey,
The clouds so close to be so silent.
