Southwest Travelogue

AZ sky

What was it you said he said about the desert?
The way it looks like underwater, only without the water,
— the different names for bloom.

The child to my right, not yet 10, and thinking how to make a buck.
His approach, like mine at that age, buying baseball cards and, like all of us,
collecting the names of strangers for later use. He played machine pitch.
I smiled at the red that only a uniform can be.

The man stood needle distance from a towering cactus,
a phone a sentinel between them. Blossoms beginning
from its royal crown.

Here, there are
ten thousand ways
to see.

Hills hear moonlight just like mountains do. Strange this
costume that the trees wear.
Wannabe fever tree.

Yesterday, we drove through desolation. A place
that turned people into tumbleweeds.

Another night where
they said to expect snow and, well,
mud instead.

A pine tree looks
made by a feather or a brush. Needles
on the ground as long as an evening.

Waking up today is like any other
First the pond sings.

There’s a tree here that no one can name.
Hair like fire in winter.
Golden, unadorned.

If I could move like light’s
imprecise brush, doctoring the edges
of the sky, softening.

Snow field and a white calf,
patrolling as if uniformed.
Sun hung high overhead so its’ puddling black
is the only sign of movement.

Some feline with a name like Georgia and wrists
like your mother left these prints in the snow. I’d follow
them, but I wouldn’t want to get there if waiting
was just the middle of their story.

So far I’ve seen the sun fall
into the crown of a ponderosa
day after day.

It’s morning, for certain.
Yet, the color
is all wrong.

In that opaque purple — pre-dawn — house lights on, just
so. Out the window I swear I see a new mountain:
hunched and protruding, only it’s my reflection.
I wish I’d chosen other words.

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Hi! It’s been a few weeks. I’ve been travelling around the Southwest for family and work. Unfortunately, it made writing a bit less predictable, but I logged a handful of observations over the last 12 days that made me want to try an experiment in form. I was recently reading Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. This poetic conversation is a volley of short observations, stanzas, turns of phrase that somehow builds to compounding effect. When I looked back at my notebook for the last two weeks, there was a lot of nonsense, but then there were some nuggets of something here and there. I decided to try and put them all together in a sequence of sorts.

I recently talked with my dad about how much I love the sound of an orchestra tuning before they play a piece—in some ways, this piece is after that effect.

I spent a fair amount of time at my mom’s art show in Arizona, which likely inspired the “ten thousand ways to see” part. Also, this Daylight Savings Time has been weirdly pronounced which is likely a catalyst for all the morning and evening imagery.

Because of the length and the stutter step nature of this piece, I’m not going to do a recording for this one. Sorry :)

With gratitude,