dry watefall, again
I'd slip on slick rock granite
hundreds of feet, to a dried
pool, the nimble bighorn sheep
sipped water here before memory
that day, hiking east Stoddard
Ridge, cross country, along a
ridge that resembled, in profile
your turned-away back that night
in bed after you rolled away,
you led me there, past the last
dirt road gouged by four by fours,
the open stand of 14,000 year old
creosote, the smell of rain in the
desert is a rolled down window
thing, that summer night long
ago, in the desert that day you
carefully stepped down cliffs,
a bighorn's fire-charred horns
in one hand, you could appraise
me, another in a long chain of
lovers, deserts yield to fire
one season and in the next, to
flash flood, then to the down
hill slide of silent gray stone
Ruth Nolan
c. 2009
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