(1)
Hard to tell
whether the wind
last night was social unrest
or coyotes’ dreams as darkness flowing.
The lightness of touch suggested
nature whispering
in the face of human discord
yet in the absence of a moon
and with so few stars
to give direction there were only the neighborhood palms
leaning on the moment
as if time
had taken solid form and claimed
the desert underneath
the city as its first
and only home.
(2)
Stone-bright the way ahead
runs true to course, rising by the step
to a view of all things possible
and some
forever out of reach. All those things
that never change come what may
are out there, stubborn and holding their ground
through traffic jams and newscasts,
analyses and polls, discussions
that take truth
away just as the sun
has stripped first the outer skin
of the saguaro lying
where it fell two summers back
and subsequently
dried its flesh revealing the core
connecting tip to root, the inner life
revealed in code, an alphabet
surviving after language ends.
(3)
The peaks and dips along the ridge
rest easily this morning
against clouds too closely packed
for news to pass
from worlds beyond our own.
Grey light, pigeon feathers
scattering from the rooftop cooling unit at house
four-three-four-seven
where a hawk endures a mockingbird’s attention
until he stretches out
and eases into day’s grey light.
Nothing exists outside
his range of vision, he’s the headline and the story
circling higher than opinion columns
reach. Doesn’t need words
to know what he knows. Leaves emptiness alone
because the entire sky
isn’t worth
the area he’s taken for a home.
(4)
A bright and tranquil morning
on the way around the pond where red-
eared sliders and secrets
move just beneath the sky
that floats across the surface to the reeds
at the farthest edge.
A Black phoebe picks flies
and rumors from the air.
None are too fast for him,
neither the latest out of Hollywood
nor royalty’s ongoing
struggle to be important. What is true tastes no different
from what is not; he keeps dipping
and swerving
through politics, finance
and all the way down
to the feathers and bones left on the ground
still with a glaze of moonlight.
(5)
Arroyo walk, sidestepping the facts and
speculating whether
the boulder resting on the slope just past
where the trail dips came
to be exactly in position after
falling through space
or was coughed out of the Earth.
Some facts are immoveable, too heavy
to be argued about. But someone’s always
naming parts, allocating
numbers, holding science
to the light and insisting explanations
matter more
than the experience
of stopping every time
to contemplate the mystery
that built the world before there was
a truth
to lie about, when
only the stars kept records.
(6)
Darkness left, light straight
ahead, the first sky of the day can’t decide
which mood to promise. The clouds
are carrying concealed, the sun’s
a lonely heart just waking up.
One day looks
much like another, give or take
the shadows and the low high
in the forecast, rain
this afternoon on a street
for all weathers where showers dance
on asphalt,
heat soaks in
and wishes for a better world
go barefoot, once around the cul-de-sac
and back, beyond the visible, beyond
reality, beyond what even
the hawk can see
from his throne of wind.
David Chorlton lives in Phoenix with a view of a desert mountain and more interesting local bird life than many people expect in a city. The desert still teaches him about poetry in a way academies can never do.
