Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Thoreau

There's a river of tears for The-roo somewhere,
Not here, the red rocks marauding their wisdom,
While a spark of white man's fire hides
In half-life, strung along the straight lines
Of loose wires joining tracts of dust together,
Quite unlike the Haystack Mesa mines
That brought the old uranium from Grants,
Whose fallout built shelter, now Indian schools,
The bicycles blue and improvised,
For children to live in the fantasies,
Whatever hopelessness provides.

To think I stopped here to follow an owl,
To know the wings of cloud as thinking air,
The sound of wind through space pontifications
From the higher realm of heads in a tableau
That unfurls its drama far across the broken land
Where colors are alive, emptiness a friend,
Silence is the nearest thing to God.
Ah but even the children are resentful here,
Too old for explanations, not old enough to drink
The endless fire. The stone has no pity
For them, or me. One might say we are ignored.

What led me here? The wind might say, more kind
Than DinĂ© strangers. I'm a refugee I swear
From what I never cared to know, for it never
Understood me. And I travel on alone because I can,
For as long as I hold out, for what waits
Will solidify like these rocks assuming faces,
And they'll lord from in the sky, without a word.
Some girl will offer comfort, as they even seem to here,
A warm inquiring eye so brusquely mistaken
For an ancient invitation, the curl 
That makes the wind seem almost friendly.