The desert

A poem

I need the desert:

my way out of malaise—

driving through Mojave—

they call it nothing out here,

but no landscape is nothing

just like no canvas is nothing:

the found spring in potential:

the curves of the earth:

rock sculptures casting shadows

slate against slate,

everything is edges.

I seek the full picture—

the widen aperture—

the upward slope

of the mountain range—

how the sand turns saffron with time,

from this distance those flat hills are pink—

an other world pink—

a table I’ve never seen

against an Easter sky

where the hawk swoops by and accuses me:

never in need of new direction

only new eyes.

I finally see elsewhere

away from myself:

pushing through burnt red canyons

ready for being: the mesa: the moving.