Mojave Blues

 

I suppose I should herd these hills
like beasts strayed out of the pen
and milk them like bison on the horizon.

But they amble away as night falls
and I don't care because they are colorless.
My fences are unmended and undefended.

The boys go whooping out in jeeps
to round up the dust. Their pagan folly
makes breath itself into a cruel rule.

Call their bent beer cans aluminum
offerings ot the deities of the desert:
What the Wind won't take the Sun will break.

See the strayed crittes stricken by heat
picked to bones by various hungers
and their bones blown under a bush.

Somewhere life has a better chance
and the mountains are the mothers
of rivers. And rain is no danger.