Arizona Time - poems
Springtime on the Road to Sells
Marigolds, globe mallow, shadow of a hawk, and there goes a runner racing back in time to before the border knew what it divided. History’s in bloom: one country, two countries, no country at all, just the land speaking back to those who live upon it. And saguaros aren’t sure what to believe in, earth or holy orders or the rain. Border guards on duty, watching for the wind to make a run for freedom. A few miles more to where the journey ends at a water tank and a mockingbird so happy the sky pours from its throat as it sings until darkness and then it ascends to drink from the moon when it’s full.
A Feather for Geronimo
Bones to line a burial, a handful of thunder and a basket of the earth soldiers come to steal. They will arrive when the peaks cannot see them, when grasses bow, streams cry out in pain and winds retreat. They will claim possession of the sun and stars but the land will have returned to the universe from which it is borrowed. Sleep, while the midnight fox loops his tail around the moon, while Goshawks dream in the pines. Come daylight when the junipers and sycamore awaken green will flash and shadows fly. Hide in a pinecone, grow into the forest and watch: blue smoke or uniforms with the bodies pressed clean out of them, only the Thick-billed parrots know which, they who wear trees for a disguise. |
Mysteries
About faith they were never wrong, the desert angels. Black clouds above the mission church, an owl at night for each departing soul and prayers for rain ride the thermals every day. An echo, echo marks the closing of the wooden door as footprints leave a dusty trail to midnight. Skunk time, bats are saints flying in sacred space and ringtails find a way to bind their tails around belief. Darkness is the miracle that makes miracles complete: the crops smile again, roadkill comes back to life and inside old adobe walls the organ plays without the hands of a musician. Listen: the notes are walking on their toes uphill on the stony trail to be closer to the stars.
Once Upon a House
A summer night, water flowing through the cooler at the window on the west side and the fan blowing east to the kitchen. All the windows open. Radio tuned to starlight; it might really have happened like this, beginning in the bedroom when Mrs. gave permission to her husband and he knew there was no cure. Little traffic on McDowell, less along Third Avenue and no one walking on Palm Lane to hear the second shot. In the wooden shed behind the house, any job unfinished had to stay that way. Hammer, hacksaw, work bench all lay quietly as if to dream, and even the mirror was blinded. |
An Aria for Ghost Towns
Clouds of autumn sunshine. A high C from where a music hall once stood, a loose gate swings from a fencepost. What a time it was when the creek sang softly and the windows were open all night in the cribs. No roof on the jailhouse, no walls at the hotel, nothing for sale at the general store, no books in the schoolroom. Sparrows on the church steps, Turkey Vultures circling down like angels come to purify the men coated in the darkness they brought out from the mine before going to the evening’s chosen girl. Deer tracks. A fox on the path. Stars flowing overhead and the soprano moon singing only of the past.
Rear View
Here’s a handful of sunset to savor, a taste of last light that will last until dawn, a few inches of lightning and a rain scented leaf for a keepsake. Here’s a minute preserved from the past, a raindrop that fell in the last summer storm, and a glass full of fog from midwinter. Here’s a bone washed clean of moonlight and repeating all night a few bars from a mockingbird’s song. There’s space enough between what’s true and false for a comet or a dream to pass, wind running behind, its cheeks puffed full with stars. |
Night Flight
Two hours of the year to go and one step from the back door into darkness. Quiet except for trial fireworks as the mountain counts down. Time on a tightrope. Across the wash a few windows still awake and streetlamps on their toes straining for a view into the future. There’s an owl perching in the yard and when her moment comes she flies at barely shoulder height, dipping first then rising, on the way to where spirits meet with a wingspan twelve months wide.
Owlcast
Here’s what we need to know today: the owls are well. It’s mating season and they’re calling close to home. Wings wide beside the streetlamp, sudden glow and plumage pale. There has to be a house fire somewhere for the morning news, has to be a presidential outburst better suited to a prime time sitcom built around dysfunctionality. New moon. Spirit voices. Midnight’s meditation. Morning and a shower of goldfinches out of the sun, first light moving barefoot down the street and yesterday’s headlines fading in the clouds. There’s a war and there’s a cease-fire, a scandal breaking with high crimes in low places. It’s rush hour, the traffic lights are blinking: left-wing, right-wing, and the hawks who roost beside the golf course have a wing for each side but they’re gliding above it all, gracefully intent on catching prey while foreign policy becomes more foreign and executive orders blow coast to coast in a storm. It’s a Madison Avenue country with a Wall Street appetite and news blowing in from all directions. Fire, flood, deportation, give me tariffs or give me a voice from the spirit world, something soft as feathers calling up the day. |
Radiation Dream
The sky is floating through a room equipped with moving parts that glide without a sound; screens displaying numbers that relate to the position a resting body takes while beams are focused on places eyes can’t reach. The world outside rolls over in its sleep until the power brings the sun to life. An owl passes from the dark to the bough on which she rests to address the mysteries, calling for the agents of destruction to turn to healing and connect the sleeping to the waking world. A hawk’s eye circles over open space. A diagram appears on screen. She fixes her attention on the far below. The ring of parts moves gracefully around and around. Wings angled, she comes down from the sun to Earth, electricity in flight. Blue heron, Laughing falcon, melanoma, alligator, pocket mouse, fruit bat, Harpy eagle, free-tailed bat, Scott’s oriole, lymphoma, Black- tailed rattlesnake, jaguar, mountain lion, and sometimes it seems that cancers are the life force in the universe with the unsuspecting simply in their way. Lie still, the moon is on its circle course. This room is where a slender thread becomes slow lightning.
On the Job
Late glow on the slopes, desert streaming between the ridgeline and the streets below, Friday afternoon, T-shirts spotted with the stains a day’s work leaves behind and cashiers at the supermarket scanning what the weekend needs. Mourning doves for restfulness, grackles for opportunism and he who all day wheels the carts stacks another line to steer back to the entranceway. So much to be done: bread to bake and orders to compile, restrooms to be cleaned and a country to be run. A painter splashed white is picking up fruit, a man dressed in black casually steps between coffee and the cookie shelves with a sidearm strapped conspicuously at his side. So much to be done: wash the floors, make appointments, secure domestic peace and spray the fruit to keep it fresh. Almost Saturday, but there’s work for the workers to do even when the sunlight looks nervous. No rest for the doctors, mechanics, plumbers and all who believe that even a rudderless ship reaches port in a storm. |
Spiritrunner
Another day begins to sag and suddenly he’s here, looking both ways on the run and happy as sunlight soaking into early summer. The Zuni see him bringing rain, the Maya knew he gave his brightest plumage to the quetzal, to Mexico he brings the good luck America would deny. His footprints in the dust lead away from evil. He’s earthy, sacred, draws latent thoughts from hiding and makes them run, run, run so fast no witches can keep up. Two twenty-eight in the afternoon, he’s a backyard spirit chasing memories away to make space for living now. He’s patient, fast, won’t give up and has a sense of humor to strip unworthy presidents of their hubris. Many mornings he parts the feathers on his back to let the daylight warm him. On the stony front yard beside the ocotillo his presence is divine on humble ground until he runs where even spirits have to hunt. And with a good day’s life accomplished he returns to dream the feathered dream of those who are beautiful and yet uninterested in superficiality. No boasts, no falsehoods, nobody to deceive, just the modest reassurance that come storms he can outrun them and carry shreds of lightning in his beak.
Letting Summer In
Dry heat scratching at the door, summer waking up, the afternoon going down to peaceful waters far away and black sunlight moving around the cul-de-sac whose only exit leads back to the world trouble come, trouble go, and discount at the store one day a month: ten percent off sadness no questions asked, no regrets, a small chance of rain ahead and thunder at the edges of creation. Inches into dusk, the backyard swing hooked to the horns of the moon with a handful of today to scatter for the flicker in the morning and so restore balance, cancel legislation that howled when it was signed. After daylight forgets what it has seen, float into sleep on the day’s final sigh, cheek to the pillow ear to the sky. |
