Writing from the far edges of the American desert.
All entries that I consider poetry. When poems are posted, I consider them rough drafts which I continue to edit over the years.
Your thunderheads climb the glowing sky,
in a desert reflecting warm colors of sunset.
You bring sacredness this summer’s night
to enkindle a lonesome dreamer.
Desert storm of beauty,
Your clouds are breathtaking.
Your rain visits arid wastelands.
Your thunder echoes
over painted sandstone labyrinths
over cedar berried trees
over my sandblasted tent.
Your savor is intense.
Your sheer force humbles.
Your cloud juice is my soul food.
You’re my greatest friend!
Laying on my back beneath stars
galaxies and glowing gases
I think of the Creator.
There is no end, nor beginning.
There is no touchable ceiling.
Earth roams a mysterious-muted void
around a young star, quietly roaring.
My mind cannot wrap around infinity
nor the atrocious chasms of outer-space.
What about a 4th dimension?
For now,
I’ll just listen to the canyon wind
singing to my ancient soul
beneath those candled skies.
They have felt cold desert rains-
the warm air when it sifts through sage.
They’ve dipped into fresh mountain springs.
They’ve cuddled baby lambs
and comforted nervous ewes.
They’ve been blasted by dust
and ripped over bobbed wire.
My hands are simple.
My grandmother’s hands are
deep mirrors of wisdom and silence-
I want hands that inspire
after ages of life.
Dark rain clouds wander blue skies
where dreams come alive,
visions of the land singing
A raven cries from a hole in a gnarled tree
with twisted whistling branches.
Thunder echoes across the desert,
Farther than the eye can see
The black lava rock is the blood of that ancient beast
That was slain so long ago
Locusts begin buzzin. An eagle heralds
The dawn when sunshine slithers
Up over the mountain rim
Grandpa pulls up his trousers because
Of no suspenders; he laughs
Out with his diabetic belly
And sings of how he suffers from
“Noassatall Disease”
Grand kids pile out of
The truck hollering and
Shouting as grandpa sticks
His false teeth back in,
Everybody is laughing
Heavens above are glistening
A joyful meadowlark sings.
Those island clouds roll by.
The day is so quiet in summer shade.
On my back I lay.
The clouds twist and turn above mountain tops,
their shadows quietly roar.
God has been protecting my lonely heart
his olden days aren’t forgotten.
I dream and know the darkness of the woods.
I come here in the day time to feel the wind.
These things are clever.
I’m broken away from common life
thinking deeply on every rhythm
of the sleeping hidden grass.
This takes me farther away
and gives beautiful rain
from a dazzling gray.
I Dream of
cottonwoods gathered in river bottoms,
waving mountainous branches,
and knowing their wise spirits.
I dream of
sandstone canyons
and feeling the roaring of flash floods
and the thunder of rainstorms
I dream of
barren isolation,
of weaving through the deepest
interiors of the Colorado Plateau.
I dream of
constantly scouring the landscape on two feet,
beneath galactic clouds and blue sky.
I dream of
Creator’s artwork of sprawling wastelands.
I dream of the furthest horizon.
I dream of
someday dying in desert seclusion.
Let the wildlife feed on my remains.
Let my bones bleach under sunrays.
From dust we came.
The Creator gave me life.
I was born from dust and clay.
The Wind dances in my lungs.
From chrysocolla skies
my dreams are chiseled.
From granite clouds,
I was given inner strength.
My life and the land are one.
My faith flows in sandy rivers
traversing painted wastelands,
standing ageless as Bristlecone Pines.
One day,
my tangible existence will expire.
But I will forever roam
landscapes of beauty.
I drive out of this small town early on a spring morning, and off into the wilderness. Heading down dirt roads on tires worn thin, they stir dust into clouds. Going 50 miles per hour across purple sage valleys, I’m headed for a mountain range of low rising foothills.
The road itself doesn’t intrude much. Southern Utah is a piece of the old west, where the brown foothills contrast sharply with blue sky. It is quiet, except for the distant rumbling of commercial jet airplanes, or a few cawing ravens.
Living in silence, I have an old-fashioned heart that yearns for the dying past. It is dying because humans are forgetting from whence they came. They are building new technologies and claiming to be evermore advanced. Soon they’ll be claiming to control the weather, and will have every spot of earth under their footsteps.
When that sun falls every night, I cannot stop looking into the crimson colors, knowing that one more day shrivels away. As we head into a future of uncertainty, what will we face?
I feel like a monster possessed with evils
that I cannot escape.
I’m stuck with my vehicle, a necessary evil,
four wheels to carry me across the barren planes.
I am a mass of thoughts
and dreams chasing forgotten things,
a recluse always in those mountains,
always feeling brave and alone.
The atmosphere is teeming with nomadic clouds.
I want to move with passion.
The earth owns my aching, ascetic core.
I’ve been broken and pulverized.
Still, I want to remain undeceived.
I want to resist modern-life
and day-dream.
The sun is rising.
The dog’s lying in the grass
listening to the crickets.
The roses are blooming
along with daffodils.
The wind swings them.
My orange cat’s purring on
The window sill.
Wind whistles through
the window screens.
The sky is lighting up,
burning with
warm glowing hues.
Just outta bed, I
open the wooden door
and sit on the porch.
Chimes sing.
The air is full of
fine sediments
blown in
from the desert.
The land has been swept
by winter and summer.
It’s tough and faded.
It’ll outlast any human era.
I once passed an old graveyard,
and saw the eroding tombstones.
Each individual had dreams,
a pumping heart,
and a smile.
The land
will outlive the foolishness
of lonely humans.
Rattle in the wind
like bones
soft and brittle,
the corn isn’t ready.
The wind loves your fields
of dead awful silence.
What creeps in your shade?
Cornstalks are friends,
they laugh,
and they cling
to Mother Earth,
graciously.
I sing to you,
from a hammock
nearby.
Just listening to your
Leaves.
The corn babies are wrapped
up in their cocoons,
still developing.
Rocks cry under clouds pouring endless sweat
on green grass that dies slow in autumn.
The rabbit’s life grows cold and meets a fiery end.
Young was the sky that stood bold.
Shadows again hunt the black leafless night.
The sweetness is no more. Here comes he
an animal ghost laughing between
two unexplainable worlds.
It is quick with movement to steal air
carrying a joke that a jester couldn’t give.
The mystical trees paint the
coyote’s soul over a white canvas.
He answers quickly to the
injured rabbit’s eerie squeals
swiftly ending his struggle and pain
caused by the old man’s black Sedan,
as it journeyed the gravel road.
the mornings here on the desert are still,
long, and eternal
why is the landscape so barren,
and beautiful?
stories burn like the never ending past
I usually come here story hour
when Earth recites her tales
just before night when the heat sings sweet
I have found no common place
because my dream belongs to
this sea of rocks, stones, and bushes;
endless walls of grabbing beauty
and pictures painted on golden faces
when I die in my country bed
the sleeping hills bury me under their desert trees
one day walking across this endless void
will be peace within my happy cave
to my lonely fire at night,
I sing to your visions
the stars above
grow fat and twinkle
monsters are always heard
stone blood keeps flowing
never walk alone in
this world of supernatural
behind mountain doors
desert gods build palaces
Rolling thunder echoes across the land
Shadows creep behind images.
Unusual feelings manifest themselves
in the strange day.
A timbered forest is
where black ghost creatures
lose themselves in bushes.
A sound is made here
and then there.
The spook is a jestful trickster.
Many things speak up from the
floor of the ancient earth.
It is how the wild
animals of this forest
find peace to survive.
It crawls upon your skin,
walks upon your feet.
It dangles from wrinkled trees.
They have eyes staring
at you from nearby.
Maybe it is an unknown beast
about to jump from the brush!
I pulled my car up to a post marker off the side of the highway,
and there hung a dead coyote. Its head was tied to the post with bailing wire
His face was covered in blood
and his glassy eyes were still open staring at the broken sky.
its tongue was hanging out and drizzling.
I feel anger and sorrow for this murdered creature.
I wanted to untie his body and bury his soul somewhere remote.
a secret place where he could rest.
The coyote, a friend, but they stuck him on display
wasting his life away. They cut his ears off at the base
for some sort of bounty for the local BLM.
I can’t stop seeing into those glassy eyes and into the shadows of the beast.
Hopelessly hanging there, fur whipping in the wind. I’m connected to its death.
cold blood moving. the breathing is brittle and short.
As I looked at you coyote I felt the sorrow of this world.
Those damned cowboy men with chewing tobacco, leaving beer can trails all over
are bloody murderers and thieves of this ancient land.
They mock the very soul of this beautiful wild.
There’s a feeling deep inside every human being,
a tiny suspicion about something that lurks around in reality.
It cannot be seen nor heard, because it hides itself.
It can visit you with it’s clues!
It’s the abnormal shadow in the green trees.
It is in those abandoned hills, and in the darkness of an attic.
It loves the moonlit night with an eerie presence.
It loves to hide at the bottoms of the ocean
like the white whale that killed Captain Ahab.
It is in Grandma’s old cellar.
You can feel it while looking at a crystal waterfall,
or down an ancient highway with weeds growing from it’s flat top.
There it hides in the corner of your heart, taunting your might.
It would like to reveal itself to you.
And someday it will on a mysterious afternoon,
in the right place, at the right time. You will get to meet it.
Today I sleep away in this slumber
and awoke to a footstep and then another
My campfire was still smoking.
The morning light was close but an not quite.
The blue haze of the night lurked around my tent.
The wind dashed through the trees.
Then the clouds under the moonlight slid
silently over the mountains.
All alone, I had wandered across this countryside,
and then rested away in my camp.
The fire burned, and danced through the night.
I made it very big to keep me from fright.
This was a deep cemetery of trees! Very old they were!
I had traveled through them, like a trance.
Now I am in my tent and I have awaken!
This footstep fear is in my veins, and I tick with fear.
What is out there? I worry myself as I soon
remember I had left my food out over the night.
All of a sudden I can hear a curious snort!
My dinner pan bangs on the ground.
I can hear licking from a snout,
and grunts from some kind of beast.
What is it? What is out there?
The furry thing moves about.
I can hear him in the early light. What should I do?
I do not want to move,
cause I feel stiff! After a moment,
I Slowly and cautiously get up
and take a peek through the screen
of the tent and there in front of me is a Bear!
A REAL BEAR!!!
I watch in quiet bewilderment
he doesn’t know I am here.
He is eating my food, piece by peace.
The fear is still in me.
I rattle the tent like a bush
and make strange sounds,
as if I were a beast too.
The bear stops in his routine and stares at me.
He is now frozen with fear.
The black bear’s eyes are stuck,
then like a flash of huge thunder
he takes off running into the forest,
and then he is gone.
Every now and then, there is a strange silence on that mountain that finds its own way into our little town. Mysterious animals shroud themselves in the forests up there, beneath the cloud scraped skies.
Alone and dirty on quiet afternoons, I like to leave the town on foot entering into those trees on the mountain’s edge. The great forest always knows when I am coming.
I climb to a hill just below the mountain and sit down on top of it to take a break, letting a little sunshine bathe me.
Ever since I was a kid, I’m used to the fact that trees can talk to each other. They can visit among each other like people, but with their own tree language. Words among trees spread faster than the wind. One tree sees me coming, and they all know I’m there!
People do not listen to this mountain very much, they seem to have their ears closed when it speaks or acts funny.
Long ago, it is said that there was a great bird the size of a house that found the shady canyons of the mountain a home. I believe there are creatures here today, still unheard of.
If you carefully listen when you come to the mountain, you will be tricked into hearing phantom noises. These whispers or jolting laughs are the trees being funny. If you hear anything that you cannot explain, it is them. They like to fool with your mind!
When no one is around but me, the trees sing. They sing happiest when the wind filters through their branches.
Trees think and can record history in their own way too. They seem to keep memories of those that have died long ago; remembering the wars, and the good times of five fingered beings!
The trees of this mountain have always been together and united. They know what peace and happiness are. While Mother Earth turns on her axis, there they are always waiting. They know what the wind will bring. They know it carries in its arms, silent messages of the Earth Mother. She speaks her thoughts through them. They talk when she does.
The uncanny feelings slither through
this cavernous vista like the lonely fire
that burns within the phantoms and faded
shadows that once had casted forth
The living trance would once long ago
in the ancient times, howl and clamor a
deep declaration from the coyotes in the
flourishing, rolling hills of eternal rest
The emotion of blazing skies
would burn the candled nights beneath
the green, talking cedars.
The clouds shattered by so many ages
without a footstep never even faded.
Truly the soil, and the blue skies of this
ripe sphere was a rest and a haven to give
sanction to uneasy souls when there
was no other warmth.
The compassion and benevolence was given
to their calm and humble hearts.
Only they would know the song, and
it was a chant. This divinity of celestial
brilliance would cast away the evils,
It was a silence where the Creator spread
his spirit over the land. A genuine peace
was upon everything. It was trusted!
Away in the hidden mountains, and
anywhere there was a belief, the
faith was built up.
The Creatures of the forest
did rest and sleep. The fowls raised
their young. All in life was quiet,
and still.
Alone, where the old people of the
Earth traveled, while they lived
close together in this life.
Long ago, into ages of silence.