The mountain is not quite hidden in fog,
The pain is not yet obscured, the cause
Of the blaze still not determined.
The sun chooses wisely which points to highlight,
What gaping holes to fill with shadow,
What distant range to overhang with blue,
How much white to bestow on Barstow's angora.
And one knows where the access roads go,
And how long it takes to get there, and how
It moves from blinding sun to darkness in
The one vast horizontal sweep of air,
Where the broken dragon on the ground
Is matched by the one in the clouds
That asks "what r u gonna do?"
For the little one bereft, but impossible to touch.
But there's too many colors in the sage to identify
One that should be nurtured, one that could be saved.
On the outskirts of Yermo, there are enough
Broken windows on Ghost Town Road
For the teenagers to make a friend of the wind,
And enough abandoned frames to spray with color.
But for some there is never enough
Fuel to feed the fire, continual in belch and roar.
When the sun gets low enough, the mountains
Turn so red, it's like I can feel her anger,
That sense that, despite it all, she's been blamed
For something that she couldn't do,
And she only knows how to flail
In resistant confusion, like the bristles
Of the Joshua Tree, jostling madly.
But sometimes they are so still, the sun becomes
So kind, the blue sky seems forever,
It is hard not to forget, impossible not to forgive.
The sky turns pink, the mountains purple.
There's such terror at the thought of a new day.
