Landscape with Missing River

Unearthly, you enter the stage, gradient reds

and browns, escarpments effaced by wind,

a coyote skittering into piñons. Trees lean in,

ears bent to hear the river where you lie,

I am, the two of us locked in, a tragedy’s tale

of a mad king’s machinations. The curtain falls,

you flatlined beneath a galaxy’s cold-gorgeous

pinwheel. Your crown of razored stars bright

spangling when.

I am elsewhere, awake in the desert, early

punctuated by sirens, accompaniment of dog

howls, a memory’s wolf-pitch

                                       now time will pass me by

Plainspoken, a line delivered, your way of saying

goodbye like a problem the mind could solve.

Above the rooftop, dawn opens a pink window,

the palo verde cast in roseate glow.




Reprinted from Landscape with Missing River (Barrow Street Press). Reprinted with the permission of the author. All rights reserved.