Monthly Archives: January 2014

Without cloud, without wind,
just dust rising in an opaque haze,
months of yesterdays the same—

a canyon the gods have forgotten,
overlooked while taking their business
elsewhere. This is no lovers’ quarrel,

no slow strip tease, no small spat
to make up with passion,
it will take a while to ever trust

these gods again. Perhaps we never
received notice that they’ve been laid off,
sacked, canned in the reorganization

of the planet, their replacements: bumbling
neophytes in seductive, hard-bellied struts
without wear, without compassion.

Perhaps they have retired, given-in
to changing times to watch the show unfold
without water—you never know.

In January dirt,
a rattlesnake awake
warming in the road.

No grass, hawks wait on rocks,
falcons on cow chips,
close to the ground squirrels.

Winter haze, Great Blue statues
watch mounds at their feet
across bare landscapes

designed with black lines
following flakes of alfalfa,
no two the same—

while coyotes come
to the house for help—
but we cannot bring the rain.

                              It is certain the world cannot be stopped nor saved.
                                        – Robinson Jeffers (“Going to Horse Flats”)

We may not have met the hermit at Horse Flats,
begging for news, hoping for more, a turn
towards the good, unaware that our senses are

bombarded now with addictive sensations.
He is outside of our tightening vortex, free
of its forces, yet his lonely choice starves

to share years of one prolonged epiphany,
an overlapping and timeless state of self-sufficiency,
his world free from a certain course.

She has her own way
of pruning trees, not the gentle touch
nor the vision of an arborist,

instead she snaps and breaks,
thins the weak wood that will not bear
the weight of fruit, clears the forest

just to start over—she does not care
if we wring our hands, gnash teeth
or bleed before she accepts our flesh

over and over again. Our moment
means nothing to her, she will adjust.
The grass will spring back to life

beneath our step, mountains rise
and valleys fall to waste. Nothing is
as it was—how could it be?