I still remember how the sand crunched under my shoes
when I paused on the top of the mountain with water enough
and bird call and stone became a quality of loft.
Black, pink birds raced downslope like the quick tips of brushes
painting arcs and the wind rushed up from the penciled grid
of the dim and hazy city where all sound become whale form.
Here the islands of spanish dagger thinned and silver bushes
shook in the breathing of the high air where one restrains the eyes
up for fear of tumbling back. Far west, a smoke stack
pointed a flat black horn at Arizona. Southeast rose
gray refinery smoke that lay flat and brown, soon for Mexico
when the breeze turns. One could smell the spark of cold-rolled
steel, yes, steel bundles rolled through the sky from the North
like gods’ wigs, their shadows wider and grayer than cities.
This is the last place one wants to be when storms come.
I still remember how the sand crunched under my shoes
as I ran with the birds downslope with water enough
pounding the stones and red mud racing and the city
grid wet and smokewashed and gray as whale forms, the spanish
dagger slashing at my pants. The brindle bushes rattled
and the gods’ drums broke wild, cracking the stone, as the high
air became solid like the mountain and a canyon opened
to me seconds later and I leaped out as yet more lightning filled
its stony bottom then went black as a mouse eye.
I’ve never stopped falling and birds still drop downslope
like the fast tips of pens drawing back-looking faces,
crowds of pink, black and green birds chasing the wind.
I still remember how the sand crunched under my shoes.
How all this is falling perpetual and how the minds of storms
never sleep and the sun shines always elsewhere and the lure
of stone becomes shadow under a tree and a whale call in the clouds.
