A trip to New Mexico, and then Arizona, conflated in memory into one composite desert of unending variety--enhanced by tiny, unmentioned, cactus plants, telescoping disparate events into epic significance.
break upwards into
a strange aerial motility
like thousands of small
children with galactic
filaments for wings
climbing the rungs
of an esophageal matrix
from a minor dream;
their tails bent caduceus-like,
wrapped around
luminescent
jet-packs,
as they can
be seen taking
off all over
southern Arizona
methodically,
like
hot-air
balloons
rising
into the green
mist,
the flat soup
of sky
shimmering
in waves
of receeding
jelly-like plasma;
this membrane,
this transparent tarp—
inversion layers
sandwiched like
discrete parts
of a medieval
song cycle,
distinct
yet
connected
together
by more
than just
the air.
The buttes
Stalagtiting
downward
in flat preliminaries
of frown—we are dry here;
the face of this land
holds no tears;
moisture condenses
into small swarms of flies;
clumps of saguaro
flower inadvertently
precariously nestled amidst
adobe style-motels,
owl-nesting mounds,
unknown Zuni, Uwanami
petroglyphs—phosphemes
of a strange arid tongue
whose echo still
resonates in the dry
valley. Thus,
It has no bones
and grass will not grow
along its sandy escarpments;
the horses do not drink
from mostly dry
mineral wells
in this
place of sediments.
Coyote's laughter,
is the nocturnal
sunlight
of a strange tongue
which appears
every evening
clothed in the invisible
gestures
of the desert.
It smiles
un-noticed perhaps,
here where
most things are
simply
not visible
and where
variations
in the refractions
of light
are called by
the names of
familiar animals
long extinct.
JZRothstein 2012 (edited 3/21/2014
Poetry by Jeffrey Z Rothstein
Read 887 times
Written on 2014-03-21 at 15:00
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And the Fireflies
And the firefliesbreak upwards into
a strange aerial motility
like thousands of small
children with galactic
filaments for wings
climbing the rungs
of an esophageal matrix
from a minor dream;
their tails bent caduceus-like,
wrapped around
luminescent
jet-packs,
as they can
be seen taking
off all over
southern Arizona
methodically,
like
hot-air
balloons
rising
into the green
mist,
the flat soup
of sky
shimmering
in waves
of receeding
jelly-like plasma;
this membrane,
this transparent tarp—
inversion layers
sandwiched like
discrete parts
of a medieval
song cycle,
distinct
yet
connected
together
by more
than just
the air.
The buttes
Stalagtiting
downward
in flat preliminaries
of frown—we are dry here;
the face of this land
holds no tears;
moisture condenses
into small swarms of flies;
clumps of saguaro
flower inadvertently
precariously nestled amidst
adobe style-motels,
owl-nesting mounds,
unknown Zuni, Uwanami
petroglyphs—phosphemes
of a strange arid tongue
whose echo still
resonates in the dry
valley. Thus,
It has no bones
and grass will not grow
along its sandy escarpments;
the horses do not drink
from mostly dry
mineral wells
in this
place of sediments.
Coyote's laughter,
is the nocturnal
sunlight
of a strange tongue
which appears
every evening
clothed in the invisible
gestures
of the desert.
It smiles
un-noticed perhaps,
here where
most things are
simply
not visible
and where
variations
in the refractions
of light
are called by
the names of
familiar animals
long extinct.
JZRothstein 2012 (edited 3/21/2014
Poetry by Jeffrey Z Rothstein
Read 887 times
Written on 2014-03-21 at 15:00
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
