SUNRISE

                                    The philosopher said, “The miracle

                                    is that the world exists.” We bathe

                                    in the beauty at dawn.

                                                – Jim Harrison (“Ghosts”)

She parts her black robe slowly,

unevenly until the long thin line

of her supine thigh grows

before a golden ribbon of light

along the Animas Mountains

as the snoring bunkhouse roars

asleep on the Gray Ranch.

I am a stranger to New Mexico,

but not Drum’s borderland songs

or the swallows glinting at first light

before me.  A man can lose himself

within the darting ricochets of birds

that distract him from his fears.

Here too, she sleeps in silence

as the moon rises from her breast

in the shadow of the Sierras,

but when day breaks over the peaks,

an explosion of blinding light

can cleanse me instantly.