The Voice of the Desert

Sagebrush sea, distant hand-axe mesa.

Brigham tea "leaves evolved almost to the vanishing point."

Distant dust clouds over Honey Lake indistinguishable from rain.

Distant skull-teeth surround dry park-like tongue. Unnatural nature

swallowing all in magnificent arbitrary divine plan.

"Not a wasteland." Pinyons grayed out in distance.

Paiute Bedouin "a mysterious probing energy"

but for those on the edge

only a holy whole hole.

Three-mile ridgeline cloud feather abolishes so many things.

Tiny cluster of ranch buildings unnoticed how many times?

The road at the edge of the frame—you missed that too.

It missed itself, disappearing for no reason.

Two years gazing into this valley, seeing nothing.

Altostratus stroked by winds cools the sun.

Look. Don't dream through your time. I don't know how

to communicate it. You won't know how to communicate it:

Schönberg, Berg, Webern, Krenek, Carter?

Who's queen of the high desert? "The deeper we immerse

ourselves into the desert, the more everything seems like a dream."

Inhabitants: mice and rabbits mostly. Whatever is contrary to the desert

soon perishes. Here young bighorns reflect on a purple-gray valley

lone pronghorn stares out over the geostratus

and dusty-backed mustangs run.

"What attracts you?" "It's their freedom. Their dignity.

Their poetry of life." On a dirt road, base of the Pine Nuts

plywood sign: "Next Stop The Twilight Zone."

Find a water source, listen for underground streams.

Sleep standing up like horses. Cloud-formed crater on salt flat.

Everyone comes to hunt something: snakes, lizards, Ruby Mountain goats.

Let goats dream with their heads up, alert on your lap

only a spot of red on white to reveal the real situation.

And thus we see that life is endless.

"My heart belongs to no one but the desert." Nocturnal voices

in wilderness coyotesaints, jackrabbitsaints, rattlesaints

dissolved in the emptiness of deity

flash floods of filthy water to wipe out the wickedness

discontent warring on itself, on luxury, on dream, on frivolous eternity.

Yet sparks of sympathy escape the sunset coals of Moab

to bind sentient beings in the ancient mythic manner

dragging them into the desert where they find their life inverted

by the gravity of dead stars

and the scientific music of those who have nothing to say.

Have you been long enough in the desert to find it thinking your thoughts?

The performing self is dead. The desert killed it. It's buried at Yucca Mountain.

Check your dosage at this brothel or that, antelope-hearted people

waving trouble away with a hat, empty as the sky

blank pages in pink dust to show what comes down

when the Five-legged Lamb and the Smoky Dog meet

at the Atomic Cafe on Amargosa Street.

"One of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man."

To see the nakedness of the land we are come

tilted strata, opus in shadow and fawn

pointillist brush camouflaged as rock but you weren't fooled, were you?

Poison drains to the low places. To suck it up the chittering minions come:

dowitchers, stilts, avocets, yellowlegs, grebes, pelicans, herons, egrets, ibis,

bitterns pumping like foghorns. To Walker Lake and Mono Lake they come

and to Deep Springs; to Carson Sink, fishing Lahontan's mercury-laden stock;

and Stillwater lake mosaic dead marshes black with waterfowl;

Death Valley, Badwater, acid spilled on alkali

Furnace Creek grackles, Scotty's Castle roadrunners

and low over Cowhorn Valley F-4s.

The desert is a bird and rises up

over a thousand unpaved roads. Just try going as the raven.

It's not quite a straight shot though—desert is crisscrossed by fences

keeping moo cows in and out. Gates, barbed wire strands on posts,

nick you with their rusty razors. Deer can jump, for them no barriers.

Pronghorns, Pliocene survivors—they can't jump to save their lives.

Have you gazed out with their eyes yet on striations, blue and purple?

They say poetry is finer than philosophy but that's philosophy, not poetry.

Not that old melodically empty poetic voice: sympathy for all, laughter at all

and with all, the beauty and the horror of it all, the music and the dream.

Dream on, says the desert, but don't forget the music.

Photo: Wallpaperaccess.com