Six paintings, six poems

Sun Rising

 

Slow light on the awakening road, a thrasher

calling up the sun, the sky breathes in, breathes

out, a dream floats away

without knowing how it ends. Desert red,

 

a world apart. No interest rates, no headlines, just

a jackrabbit who listens

to the stones whispering. It’s too early

 

for suffering to begin

or souls to rise

in protest. It’s beautiful to see

the ancient sun the people here before

 

worshipped as it rose

and whit-whit now the mountain

 

holds its heart up for all the world to see.

 

The Afterstorm

 

                 . . . after which, the trees sing

life back into birds, red earth runs

down from and water runs back to

the clouds. Oak speaks to sycamore and

madrone to the pines,

a Black witch moth informs the deer

the forest has awakened.

An alligator juniper

 

that drank a streak of lightning

stands its ground

with scars to show while light

steams from the rattlesnake grass.

Flash, flash, the rocks

 

gave up their secrets, the creek had wings

and Turkey vultures gathered

to an early roost. They’re resting now

with stillness shining on

their feathers, each of them secure

 

in knowing it was just

black daylight passing through.

 

Rocklight

 

Mountain climbing out of time, desert on the surface,

solid darkness underground.  

There’s a hawk’s eye

for a sun here

and insect tunnels to the past.

Red morning, blue dusk,

 

lizards’ tongues snagging drops of wind,

a hummingbird nests in a raindrop;

nothing impossible at midnight

 

where boulders never speak

of what brought them to life

and gave them a slope to hold on to.

Large rocks hunt the small rocks, survival

 

by night, and bloodstains on the morning sky.

 

Peakline

 

There’s a sting in the peak and a smile

in the slopes leading up

from dawn to the sigh

that comes from rocks when they see

clouds the color of dove calls.

That’s when

 

daylight soaks easily

into roughened surfaces,

when the fire in a bobcat’s tooth

begins to burn,

when a desert mountain is so solidly alive

 

the stones  believe

they could fly and hunt stars.

Over Silverton

 

Golden wind, silver wind, green lace forest below,

water for the sun to drink,

rocks alive

in flowing grass, river in the sky

and summer snow packed

in mountain crevices. Red-tail

 

scanning history, ready to sweep down, hook

his portion and go back

to living in a cloud.

There’s whiskey in the mines, old hymns

that never end

and can’t get through the church doors.

Summer cool, the last breath

 

of daylight reaches the Animas River

and floats into forest

so threateningly beautiful even

the trains cry out that they

are high and lost and long

to fly.

 

World upon World

 

There’s an upper world, a lower world, and

what’s left in between is what

the desert has to occupy.

Cycles upon cycles

through more years than a mountain can count

and the doves still wait

for saguaro fruit to ripen. Rock looks on

 

at birds taking pulp, bats spilling out

from the moon doing

the same. Day, night, prayers and sacrifice, it all

works out the way

the heat intends, with hummingbirds

as emissaries between what’s known

 

and what a dream alone

reveals. Summer months there is more

comfort inside the earth

than on it, but no patience like what

granite has, standing firm until

the monsoon rains. Whatever died

comes back to life, water

in the deep ground

 

sings, the coyotes are immortal and

never tire of living, never

ask which world it is

they’re living in.