Noontide

                                Tucson, AZ

 

Sunlight tessellates

down a crevasse &

arroyos penumbra.

 

A blaze of a day so

white it’s like some

laser pointer at each

 

compass point, as

stacked monoliths

swallow black fire.

 

Inside me, nothing

but a shadowed rift

& the throat’s fuse.

 

All matter loosens,

shatters into scree,

& spires in a wind,

 

so there is no other

revelation, as light’s

drunk down to lees.

 

 

Another Life

 

On summer-long days with nothing to do,

When air itself has become an event,

The daylight lost, lingering stains on the dunes,

When the wind is still, wherever it went,

 

When clouds have closed their shadowy coffins

Of stone while all weather has vanished at last,

A crowd of faces that darkness has softened,

Erasing the line the horizon had cast

 

As the sun is reduced to the moon’s half

Glow: O, beyond any light, beyond even

Ourselves, beyond the starry aftermath

Of the end, the very thought of it barren,

 

That sigh inside us we cannot confess:

An aching again, which nothing can bless.