Desert Day and Night

Checkmate

 

I

Five-thirty in the morning and darker

in the mind than in the sky

as the owl’s call at the window

is asking to be let in. Great-horned wisdom

from where spirits roost, voice

from the Dark Night of the Soul.

She’s flown all the way to the tree

over there, just across the wash,

and she’s sure who’s good to vote for, she can hear

a lie before it’s spoken.

 

II

Here’s a glass of dry light for a toast to the sun

and a Cooper’s Hawk in flight

whose heart is a wolf’s. A day of rest,

cats asleep, the wind on a leash.

Thrashers scratch the itch beneath the surface

of lukewarm grass. Today is a mystic’s birthday;

scorpions glow brighter when they’re blessed.

Four Peaks in the distance, boulder

fallen from the sky, the earth in bloom

and every petal a rock.

 

III

On a quiet street where nothing moves except

the moth he watches from a garage roof,

a kestrel dives and twists back

above the yard signs

declaring allegiance to a cause at stake

come the election, words against words

in silence while he turns on angled

wings to fly above all argument.

 

IV

Summer leaves a sigh behind, a postscript

to a season burning down. It floats

above the pond

with dragonflies, a dream in search

of waking life. The kind of day

memories come out of hiding and sparrows

end their starlit flight

from far away green to this desert

where the bees turn heat to honey

in the shade of an arroyo wall.

 

V

The mountain sleeps until awakening at dusk

to become a jaguar hunting in the sky. How weary

Heaven looked last night, too busy overseeing

the centuries to spare a star

for this moment. Lost car circling

the cul-de-sac, broadcast news reports

no cease fire yet between

the knights and pawns. 

 

VI

Full moon. Cool night by the pond.

The water sleeps. The sky’s awake.

The palm trees undecided; one

leans left, another right, one reaching

for eternity. Coyote steps from under cover

and stops to look back, look around, look

ahead and not move until he finds

truth and a scent he can believe in.

 

VII

Cholla moves

to mesquite shadow, saguaro to arroyo, lightning

takes palo verde, check

and mate.

Trailthoughts

 

Gravel singing underneath

each step, the foothills move aside

to let the mountain through.

Javelina left their tracks

as punctuation in the story

darkness told. No left wing

                                                  right wing

leanings here, no arguments about

whose rain it was

that fell for hours just yesterday

and soaked, root-happy, down, down

into the thirsty underworld

while rocks

                     from ground up to

the morning sky

hold their positions through whatever

comes. The desert passed a motion

to ordain all randomly

assembled forms

                               that they

become spirits to endure all weather.

 

*

 

Two ravens over desert

call truth in a single syllable

while language that grows on the ground

is busy selling fear and weight loss,

                                                                  disguising fraud

as promises. One is the shadow

of the other, echo

of the caw

that clouds hear, no questions asked

of the universe they’re in

or why they were chosen

to fly

        where lies cannot reach.

 

*

Sky rotating, gullies still, cloud east,

cloud west, and questions

chasing quail

                          too quick to answer them.

Two storms for the price of one

back in the supermarket world,

the one that knows our names. Another few steps

between thorns and the twisted

                                                             left-behind

trees in the arroyo. A tight space.

No reason to be here. And none

to turn back. The moment

in a dream that won’t explain itself. Desert’s

broken parts.

                          Time to turn pockets out,

count peace and small change while the sun shines.

 

*

 

The high ground doesn’t lend

and the low ground doesn’t borrow.

The mountain once

was married

                       to the moon, harbored nightly

mysteries until

the hour of sunlight for the taking

in a debt-free sky.

 

*

 

Seen from where the trail begins

losing its grip on the earth

the distant four peaks whiten

in a borrowed frost from winter. A chill

from the sun

                       touches down between the mesquite

chosen for a nest

and a saguaro hollowed to

its determined stand against drought.

A gentle rise in elevation,

                                              foothold

on the smooth stones, a scramble

up the slope and then

body changes places with the soul, or so

the romantics would have it,

but here

               is where coyotes turn

their daytime dreams to water

and run

              faster than the latest legislation

can ever escape good judgment.

 

*

 

The ridgeline wanders off into another day.

Loses hold on what has gone before.

Tethered to darkness

it  listens

              for the owl calling

to soften the severity

of laws

            and to summon

some compassion from arroyos.

 

Dark Night of the Desert

 

Lizard scales on moonlight

as it touches the ground. A shoeprint

lifts and begins

its search for the foot that made it

by taking direction

from the compass needle at the tip

of a scorpion’s tail.

 

*

One of those moments

every animal stops

to receive whatever the universe delivers:

heartbeat of a mouse, a soul

in the beak of an owl, a bobcat’s

breath. The silence

at the core of every stone.

 

*

The land lies back, the mountains

relax, blue darkness makes a secret of it all:

the upper slopes that spill coyotes down

toward the low ground where they hunt

for and find the scraps

of moonlight that shine in their jaws

when they run.

 

*

Lightning at the edge of time.

Slow pulse of the stars.

The hair rising along midnight’s back.

Distances surrender to the silence.

Scents catch and snag on saguaro thorns.

Cereus flowers open their petals

to breathe.

 

*

Midnight takes whatever

the desert has withheld by day

and the aroma on a spring night

drifts through the eye of every needle

used to sew

the hems of darkness

to the ground.