There Are No Stars In The Vegas Sky

 

It was a cool day.
We had pines in our yard.
Behind the house a creek splashed.
We hugged on the porch on our old couch
needing little to say.

There are no stars in the Vegas sky
and we dive in our house
for relief from the heat.
In our lost life
we kept a fire going all year,
in part against the mountain chill,
but more like the sign of our self-sufficiency.
Now we plug in steel machines
to blow the bright blast of the sun away.

Ignoring the source
of man's strength in nature,
they adore the shell of life,
pave the soil
and decorate their surfaces with tones of water,
miles of electric lights.

I find my mind pulling random pictures
from its files to show me--
a path in the wet woods,
the break of the sea,
  a street in Montana.