Great American Desert

There is no water but only sandy, calcareous soil,
and no trees to fell for a lean to, or to hang a noose.

Abandoned buffalo wallow gather stagnant pools.
Tendrils of creeks pass as rivers. They make no sound.

The only sound is the wind, always the wind,
as if a drunk God had forgotten how to be silent.

Come south of the mountains, warm desert winds breed
with the cold air of the north. They birth tempests.

Maybe it’s how the mountains subdue the sky,
alter its jet streams, shade its sun, impede its views

of unbroken horizons, maybe these are why storms
bloom into yellows and purples and greens and blues,

with clouds that seem to tumble over each other,
as if above us were an Edenic formal flower garden

fenced, furrowed, and sown by a maniacal bachelor
who breeds hybrids, lives with cats, and breathes dust.

As for me, I feel more awe than fear at a prairie storm.
The child in me excites, as if a father, gone to war,

has returned, more myth than man, with the rage
only men too hurt to know pain carry as a fetish.

With such a brooding nature, a squall line entices:
“Come. Trust me. In my violence is freedom.”

In a derecho, the rain parallels the earth.
Droplets sting like miniature flint arrowheads.

Trees rip from their roots. Walls topple like sticks.
Streets back up with sewage. Lives turn upside down.

But it is the peace after the storm that admonishes.
We do not often hear what the silence says.

When I listen, what does it say? That true silence
does not exist. There is always a whisper in the air,

a prophecy that in a world of unbroken vision,
there is also life to lose, and life to make.

That is what one finds here, among the scrub
and shortgrass. Silence is another order of voice.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.