Here are the raw, tan hands of the desert, a little scrubweed
stuck in its fingernails, and a great lashing of sun.
In the distance, a shawl of thunderclouds dresses the horizon,
curls low over the knuckled hills. Past that a different terrain,
a chill before creation, a place not mine since I’ve yet to travel
that far. Soon enough it will be dark and I’ll know
the strange lights which throw themselves across the night (other-
worldly visitors perhaps) are only mirrors for my eyes.
But where could I be? The life I wove into the land, the blood
I strung along fault lines and the veins of silver, the flush
I gave the evening bird, the sigh I put to the wind, all me.
And the littleness of my heart too. Though still,
I say this because I could and wanted to, because seeing
is a matter of feeling things out, not experience.
Even the Reata was a fake, its windows and doorways of sky
sculpted by the dry air, the empty skull of an illusion,
now a skeleton, an anonymous outline of lumber. After awhile
my world as well will be nothing more than rusty nails
and rotted wood, an honest notion that a separate universe
once existed in the hull of these motionless gestures.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 2.
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