Big Noise

he rides behind

the horse's pricked ears

shake of the mane wake

of a lovely day

it seems every leaf in every tree moves impulsively

in the same striking striding breeze

it seems as much as he can ever be

in this light faith of hurried air

love of dying

colors

an unlikely place

with its nesting snakes

of rusted rope

deep treeless holes

rows of crossed steel ready

for the invasion that never was

it takes whatever it takes

to bring him to this

takes his body as hollow as the great trunk

of the massive cottonwood

emptied of its core and burl

the rings of its years gone

years passing faster than the desert light

now there is no record of rain

or drought

tears

or loss

when the sun and moon appear

to be equals

when they face off

in the utter blue

when the geese on the rio grande see

the first pair of sandhill crane call

on their ancestral land

when the land shrinks away

in the quick blinks of sun

bursting in reaching branches

loses its reflections

in the puddled mud

drained ditches

a young boy covered in mud

nets his treasured crawdads

crawls up the slick and crumbling bank

waves his snapping claws

wide smile

at the

bosque

sky

jppestana november 14, 2016