When you come upon a snowbank in the desert,
its crystals blinking on the red soil
of gully you’ve followed in hopes of finding
an arrowhead or chipping, stop. Taste
it’s coolness, on your hands, on your tongue,
lie back and make an angel
in it’s melting surface before it evaporates
and becomes the mud on your shoes.
Bury your face in it, even though it is sharp
on your skin like a knick of paper edge.
Let it melt on your eyelashes
so that the siskins there in the juniper
become a painting by Monet and it runs
down your red cheeks as though you are crying
but you are laughing. Let it up
over the tops of your sneakers,
let it soak into your socks until they
are so wet you take them off and hang them
out the car window on the way home as trophies
of where you’ve been, what you’ve done. Because
when you come upon a snowbank in the desert
you let it quench your thirst.
##
Orchestral Evening
We were as one riding the tall grass losing
its pollen in visible air along newly strung
barbed-wire that sang as the turkey vulture
opened his wings to the polka of hoofbeats
the whirl of chucker feathers billowing on blue
sheet music and the breast of a gyrfalcon
a dust field being speckled by rain hunting
where the earth smell teases the whiskers
of grasshopper mice while cowbirds lay eggs
in nests of red-winged blackbirds in woodwind
rushes river water through ditches shovel
dug by someone’s great grandfather singing
harp songs across old bedsprings a muskrat
summoned by distant ringing of roadside
harebells hiding honeybees whose solo
ends when conductor pulls curtain strings
calls home coming home
##
Turning
Broken promises fall forgotten
and bare plum branches
shake the last pieces down
I rake them away into
Mist behind burnt orange mountain ash
flame of flicker wings
a spot of red fire
always caught in the corner of an eye
Sun like galardia
claims the sky in passion
akin to blooming colors of fall
and red plum leaves papering my walk
Burst horse chestnuts
green spikes browning, decaying
leaving smooth gingerbread nuts
like stones in the driveway
Collecting them, little boy, little girl
have found treasures of deep sea pirates
their pride more sincere then any plunderer
I am hijacked by their smiles
##
Mourning Dove Nest
Three eggs, soft ochre and pearl,
mottled like tea leaves in a porcelain cup
once used by your great-great grandmother
and then by you when teddy bears came to tea.
In perfect symmetry of a water drop
they lie unquivering on twigs
reminding you of kerplunk only these are not unbreakable
marbles, but shells fragile as dried rose petals
in your mother’s jewelry box.
But they are understated at best
hidden against a sagebrush stump
where your horse almost placed her hoof
before you pulled her short
and mother dove flew crashing along the ground
like a rubberband airplane when it runs
out of twist. She is begging to be chased. She hopes
to lure you from the nest, hoping
you will see her as easier prey and leave
all that is possible in three little eggs alone.