In the valley of Saint Peter

I go to the river and find it

dry. Yes, it’s life to die

for these contradictions. Water

cold enough will feel like burning.

 

It takes a moment to register heat.

#

Andy says something like, everything in the desert is trying to hurt.

& it’s true

there is a lot of sharp.

If you don’t look where you are going you will get punctured.

But nothing is trying to hurt you.

 

It’s trying to protect itself.

#

 

If you do not live in the desert now, you will.

#

 

In the carpool

I mention my mother

lamenting,

fretting

always telling

me she fears the storms.

Thinks she’ll die

in another dust bowl.

 

Donny said, but that happened

from agricultural mismanagement.

 

We pass

rolling sprinklers

cattle grazing

alfalfa sucking

the water table

of former grasslands

dry.

 

Degradation stretches forever in front of us.

 

Man, what do you think this is?

 

 

Are you not tired of post Catholic metaphors for baptism by rain or by fire

No matter where I drive,

though mountains owned

by businessmen or highways of fireflies

flowing across windshields,

this is the place: show

me an introduction, I hear coyotes

sound like ghosts

after a bottle and a half of red wine,

the only time I can pretend that

land was made for you and me--so big, big

as we wind to Yuma on the i-10

the river drying up and the summer storms roll in

cumulonimbus over, never knowing if one’s the big

rain that will save us or the lightning strike that will swallow whole.