A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
--William Blake
There is no innocent green, golf has puttered your lawns,
spray-washed smoketrees and tan tracts of land
spilling from your wasted hills
but these aren't smoothed, they're harsh and sharp,
good old Santa Rosas, steep enough for bighorn sheet,
toe hoof stones, lightning cut ice face,
our hearts are divided similarly,
into layers of geologic time, one sediment bed of mind,
pressured forever into the memory of logic, religion has lost its toehold in a slivered chink of talk.
There is no formula to crack these rocks,
still water from my topography, the season has gone flat,
lizards scuttling from the sun, and you might ask
why does the moth
love the flame, why does the delicate wing enjoy
the first singe of wing, and then, the opening of
narrow parts, unfolding and expanding, accordion children
of desert blood, a color pale as your skin,
the ridiculous insects in their morning songs,
flying straight towards the sun,
like me to you and a boomerang knocks us from behind
or it might be a bad day on the links, shadow bite of golf
gravity defines us all, the sky will make us burn
but we lie, and lie again,
pantomiming the rituals of the seasonal hunt, and
hoping to see the sheep in their fleets
eclipse a thin line between cool canyon wall and heat
from our position in the danger zone
within each others’ arms, the endless night, the endless nights,
when calves will be born,
then emerge skinless, with your name, no tongue necessary to guide them through the maze
c. 2008 Ruth Nolan
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