Equinox Siesta
by David Lee
A mirage is the desert dreaming about the ocean who used to live here.
—Baucis Rojas
1
The desert yawns and sprawls,
laden with sky,
flecked red on gold
the memory of snuffed starlight,
its belly shimmering
a Monet canvas
Warm air
over the cool sand
lifts a small cloud
in the sun-slick sky, its shadow,
like Beethoven changing moods,
shoves its way along
2
A quivering mirage
pushes light up the mesas
through shadows
hiding in flutes
into sky
where it glistens the air
like scattered jewels
seen through a mirror
A suspended horizon
pretends to rise above imagination,
a breaching narwhale
above this out of place sand and stone landscape
up for the bright air
delicate and fragile as the memory of spindrift
clinging to a bare strand of light,
tethers the dissolving cloud tatter
to the blue crevice of mesa wall
3
In the bajada
clefts of tangled basalt
like fallen moon shards,
a wind riven salt dome
still as the scar
of a dried river
Light and time
pool in stone basins
beneath the sky
mimicking the stillness
a coyote snuffs
and knows as death
4
A cactus wren calls
through air thin as dream,
scent of juniper
thick as blood
A beardtongue nods with the weight
of a pollendrunk bee
The old sun rolls
the earth turns in half-light