The man with a river in his head will find himself on a long stretch between Roswell and Carlsbad where scarlet creeper, morning glory, and orange butterfly weed fire the space between the shoe tips and the longest shadows of the light when evening comes to the desert.
Night is painted by the sun, the wind humbled by beatings of the bees’ wings in those spaces between the stones where, look closely, a red bear stops to listen, an orange tiger flaps an ear at the bees and the road goes east and west like the river in a man’s mind who, for a moment only, briefly, for any more would stop the heart, is stunned at the thought of a thousand herons, scared to flight, assembling the sky.
