Dusk on the Sandias
—mimic of a cardiac flood
of pinks and valved reds.
It takes a tongue
around ghost molars
to find better words:
Were you expecting a grander
phrase than watermelons?
The hut high on the west
side has not been forgotten:
careful preservation of star
patterns on earthen walls;
broken vessels under glass;
lasting bite molds of children’s
teeth. But to move without
catalogued feelings, without
modest fires so neatly
their own centers…
Come out, come out, little ones:
The pines are more alive
in late spring snow. The power
grid is up; the old volume of night
passes without a dark mare,
her rider ignored on crisp plains,
whistling a serenade and nothing more.
With Wolves
With wolves in a marked-out
plot of aspens; with the solemn
ritual of another creature—
me—slow to know the why
of a carcass. All the hollowed
space and private teeth turning
row along row of what keeps
twin myths together. Small, white stars;
small starts to run the fits of finding
spirit or ghosts on these trails.
Spring in the shoots by the saddled
creek. The bones will relatively
tell us what we want to hear
when they are ground into rings
of colors. Calcium rainbow
that will own the air and the woods
and the crows: and always the promise
of having been brought down.