Monsoon Watch
Link to Roadrunner Meditations:
https://amethystmagazine.org/2024/10/30/roadrunner-meditations-a-poem-by-david-chorlton/
Link to Pages of Light:
https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2025/06/pages-of-light-in-dark-times.html
Link to Intermezzos:
https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2025/08/23/intermezzos/
Link to Trailthoughts:
https://internationaltimes.it/trailthoughts/
Monsoon Watch
Dark spirit of desert skies, battle hymn
of weather, a year of time
condensed into minutes,
wind finding its way back
to the world. The flood that leaps
over a mountain. And in the oaks where they gather
to endure it, light turning
into thunder on vultures’ backs.
(1)
The doves at three o’clock are waiting
out time before the heat
begins to doubt its purpose
and a few degrees slip
away behind the mountain. A lizard climbs
the back wall, another
climbs to the sun. Forecast in the balance,
monsoon’s due but so
is justice;
how goes it for the people
resting out the afternoon beneath
a downtown bridge? Out of sight, out of mind,
take a detour to avoid
the burn marks on a soul the sight of them might leave.
(2)
Accordion tuned to the key of memory, window frames
alight, thunder in the stars
and a radio playing sadness to sleep.
A song begins
that has no end, the one
the border knows by heart
about darkness as the promised land
that won’t reveal who
it was promised to. Midnight trees
rattle their leaves,
a polka keeps time with the rain, and the rain
beats rhythm
by the drop.
(3)
Rainfall washes the Grey hawk’s call
out of the cottonwoods,
a sudden wind
blows it back again. River with nowhere to go,
oaks bow to its passing. Red earth
flowing, lightning flash
in a snakebite sky.
Grass seeds sing inside the earth
where mammoth bones plough
history open. Century found,
century lost,
all gods float away together
on one current, the sins
disappear with the prayers.
(4)
A wing of shadow rises over
a stream that hurries on its way through
grasses in high country. Water singing, thunder
in the earth, a lake
shaking free of its bed.
Sunlight runs downhill
to where all things
are captured, measured, and set free.
The deluge takes what it can carry
in passing through, and tangled in the boughs
of a Ponderosa Pine
leaves a flash
of exhausted lightning.
(5)
Late afternoon, hummingbird o’clock,
a bush in the shade, and a Ladder-backed
woodpecker climbing the palm
that leans against light. Soon the sky will be
a playground
with no answer in sight
to the problems of the day. The stars
may be beautiful but
the desert is just
a dry cough to the universe. It’s another warm night
to be sleeping outdoors
and it’ll rain or go dark before morning.
(6)
Sirens on a dark road
announce a weather change, wind coming down
from the moon says
more of the same. Warmer for a day then
anybody’s guess
what follows: mesquites toppled,
pond water whipped to a frenzy, dust
masking mendacity. And there will be
road rage late at night, just the casual
picking of a gun from the glove compartment
or sudden acceleration
to overtake the heat.
(7)
A barefoot corrido on the trail of work,
money’s never homesick
and there’s debris in the wake
of undocumented winds.
Temperatures rise, temperatures
fall, there isn’t a field guide to identify
who comes and who goes, the ones who are thirsty
with not much to do but thumb a ride
on passing time.
Showers of English, Spanish,
any language with a word
for trees or grass or rivers. Dry year, wet year,
new life, new country, there
but for the grace of storms
we go.
First published in Cholla Needles (Joshua Tree, CA)
