I fall asleep
in wind, and dream
wind, horizon-
wide desert
wind. People say
dreams reveal
us to our-
selves. So when I
wake I
set out, wander wind-
scoured mountain
ridgelines, getting to know
myself again.
This is what it
means to be
human, they
say: tools,
language, stories
perhaps. It seems
so simple. And yet
what am I
when the eye, the mirror-
deep eye empties
mind of everything
but a storyless white-
tailed hawk
banking steeply
into a wild
pencil-thin
thermal, wings
buffeted as it
spirals up and finally
vanishes into
desert sky?
Traveling today I
found a river
somewhere inside
me, wondered
how far it
wanders there
and how much
sky it
mirrors. All day
long, wind and desert
light, I
followed that river’s
distances, shedding
histories,
histories, until I was
nothing but
river. Nearing
mountains, I grew
cold with snow-
melt and evening
wolves drank from my
currents, tasting
the clarity of water
rinsing through every
cell alive, always
changing, always its own
transparent self.
The desert sees
itself through
many brilliant
eyes, whole
histories of eyes: antelope
eyes, hummingbird,
fox, lizard, vulture. It
knows itself
so perfectly
by now, I wonder
why it keeps
talking like this?
Water rinses
stone steadily
away, a promise it
never stops
perfecting. I’m
made of stone dust
it long ago
scoured loose, and it keeps
rinsing through my
every glistening
cell with its elemental
promise. By now
there’s nothing
to it: I can
return so
easily to streamwater
thin across
bedrock, wade
there through
mirrored origins.
The desert never
mentions arrival. Solar
heat, sky, dust-
light, a few parched
colors—they
rinse so far
through me
there’s nowhere
else to go. I
set out.
Read more work by David Hinton appearing in Terrain.org, including an excerpt of Existence and translations of poetry by Li Po, Weng Wei, and Wang An-shih.
Header photo by Simmons B. Buntin.