From Arizona
Words for an Annual Gathering
Our need for ritual brings us back to cactus, sun and desert water where the memory of a friend is waiting as we speak to the hawks and listen to the leaves newly greened beside the creek. Each of us brings a vision
for the better world we describe but cannot find. It could begin as the flower on a barrel cactus behind the mountain in its coat of spring or in the nest a wren has woven into undergrowth. It might be so close
we could touch it, or far away as the planets on which tiny machines roll and bounce and send photographs back for viewing on Earth between those
showing devastation wrought by bombs or industry so heavy the planet cannot bear its weight. We say our names and plead not guilty, pass a staff of wisdom hand to hand
hoping some of it rubs off to fortify us until we circle again beneath the eye of a raptor admiring the grace by which it takes only what survival demands.
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By the Santa Cruz at Winter’s Edge
Three deer are chewing silence in a mesquite bosque while the sun dissolves and the grey Mount Wrightson sky parts for the granite wind to pass through.
In the wake of a mile-long rumble and the horn’s mechanical wail a skunk lifts its tail to brush an owl’s call from the air.
Tracks in the Santa Gertrudis mud show the who and the where they were going the time morning rain washed all light away. Silver flows down to the river that flashes with life and debris and an egret flying low at the speed of a broken bough.
A cottonwood holds the sky in its broken, winter arms. A Northern harrier comes down to pluck its shadow from the sleeping grass in sunlight.
In its grey season the river flows past a cold metal gate that opens to let low cloud go through, and a phoebe makes loops around the mountain peak revealed as it picks another insect from the snowline.
In a mesquite at the corral fence, a Vermilion flycatcher: a drop of winter’s blood. |
Sunset in the Santa Ritas: a Recollection
The forces of wind and fire had made their peace. It was that time of day a deer wanders with such soulful steps that even mountain ranges breathe calmly from deep inside their stormy foundations. A sacred peak many valleys away stood dispensing wisdom of the kind that grows with time. History was trapped in valleys beyond eyesight whose memory was scented with incense. The panoramic ridges lay still beneath a prayer-light as the sun fused with the rock. It held a while, the yellow shading into pink and peach and purpling clouds before birdsong in the foothills turned them blue. A tanager, an oriole, a lost thought fused together as a shadow pooled in a metate left in place by a culture that simply disappeared, the way the smooth clouds did to clear the sky for what moved in to fill the space between waking life and twilight. A step toward distraction and then a backward look. The sinking rays ignited the underside of clouds that broke in chorus so to see was to hear light as trumpet calls, brilliant but softening, the way thunder might do on deciding to commit its inner thoughts for safekeeping in the sky. |
Moving On
Time runs slowly down the west flank of the Continental Divide, thumbs a ride to Duncan, Arizona, and goes into the restaurant on a Sunday afternoon, to be the only customer. It wanders out to the park where leaves are falling around the silent bandstand, ticks along the only street, stopping to address the old cars back of houses being claimed by the ground on which they stand. It stops to greet the man standing in the doorway under a No Vacancy sign at the Duncan Hotel, but his eyes are lost among leaves changing color across the way, so it’s back to the dining room for a dessert of the Country Western music that plays all day through the kitchen radio, but every song sounds like every other one. It wants more George Jones and Ernest Tubb: some cheating and redemption, and sunset is a threadbare flag across the cowboy sky.
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New Start Highway
A Red-tailed hawk on a power pole surveys the last day in a year riddled with deceit. There is no truth like his, with the fanning of the primaries as he claims his portion of the light on a day too warm for the season.
Beside a slow running creek the cottonwoods change color while higher than cactus and mesquite the air on the plateau is clear where big trucks roll and a lone tree is decked out in tinsel, hope and stars.
We’ve reached the altitude for ravens, with dry earth pressed against the sky. No stopping now: a valley waits for rain, the minutes tick away, traffic signs point toward the future, and bumper stickers expire at midnight. |
West of Lukeville
The ravens don’t much care about the border, bouncing as they do between one country’s light and another’s. And a hawk can cast its shadow on both sides at once with a wingspan as wide as a bobcat’s leap and an eye as focused as a border guard’s. It’s mostly quiet here, except for the trucks that move in their sleep while the desert shifts beneath them faster in Spanish than this gravel road allows as it dips and crackles underfoot. The vegetation greens into sunlight and dries back to desperation depending on terrain while mountain after mountain cuts into a sky that burns at its edges come June. Right now, a hammer taps in a mechanic’s tinny workshop where his radio is tuned to salt and teardrops. There’s a heaven for the poor who look across at where they’ve heard a land of plenty is at hand, but all they see from here are saguaro and the buckled ground where a mule is a man with no face and coyotes dispense promises of work in one language, pay in another, with a long walk through the night and slow death in the sun for those whose mariachi prayers go unanswered. Supply and demand are the laws: the land demands rain while the sky won’t supply it. The doves call out to springtime, and a breeze responds. Who’s there; who wants to enter? Who is it wants to build a wall to keep the heat away? |
