by David Chorlton
There is a language at the border
whose meanings lie
in the pause between breaths.
You can use it
to express ambiguities,
for prayer,
even to answer when stopped
for no reason
except to be asked who you are.
Say you don’t know,
that you followed the letter
of the law
until it abandoned you
where nobody has names
and any one is as good
as another
when it has survived translation
into being here.
David Chorlton has lived in Arizona for more than thirty years and loves the landscape, but laments that the state legislature has more thorns than the cactus.
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