Shadows

Photo: Brian Federle, Shadows in the Desert, Dec. 2016

Your shadow in the desert

by the winter sun cast.

Searing pain

as I gaze

on  dark

absence.

Convergence

restricted by this hard,

grey road

I speed past green scrub,

tenuous roots contending

with hot, graveled earth

for cool, deep waters.

Above the bleak plain I see,

steeply rising in folding

rock and rolling ridge,

shadowed mountains converge

into liquid

desert sky.

(25 Aug 2010)

Mohave

Rocks carelessly cast

from granite hills,

trapped by gravity and time,

slant skyward,

knives pointed at the throat

of heaven.

Like God’s memory this desert stretches

beyond our ken.

Ten-thousand cliffs rise from the level bed,

of a forgotten sea;

long ago in steam it rose

and jet-stream borne,

races through unmeasured time

in endless storm.

Dry Lake

Photo Dry Lake by David Saltaire


Rain lurks 

behind clouds 

too thin 

to send drops,

puddles, 
surging waves.

 flash floods go north, 

to green Seattle, 

easy landfall, 

where no resistance is 

 ever given by 

sandy bottom or 

rocky shore.

There the ancient

desert lies

beneath tons 

of breathless redwood,

dreaming of hot, 

days, dry

winds.

Oh Emerald City, 

so unaware of the pain

and joy of drought, 

endless blue days 

of aching sky,

summer's 

harsh eye 

in January

glaring

as slim clouds 

rush by

hopeful 

of a shower, 

only to evaporate 

to dusty twisters.

Monument Valley

Lifeless distant plains

Jagged peaks, red sky rising

God’s fire, frozen