The pious sober day solemnly descends 

on undamaged desert. We rise through bitterbrush 

and plumes of native grass, over yucca spines and goatshead 

prongs, past cracks and dips of swollen dirt. We stumble 

once or twice. To the west, the hand of our village spreads;

our hike is slow, our mouths grit and powder 

on a mountain cupped in a matrix of rock. 

At the peak, we see a wooden cross 

clenched in dried ribs of earth. The man who bore 

this cross lugged the weight of pardon, mounting it here, 

where the shoulder of heat is heaviest. 

We are unsettled by this silent disciple, stationed 

beneath the fading blue. We imagine the effort, 

bent-back and ashamed.

Wind sings in S-curves across the remaining stains 

of his cramped hands. We’ve walked the path 

he took to drag the cross along the crest;

those gold lines scorched into the juncture of pine 

flash with sunlight: the burden of sorrow, unconcealed, 

and just then, an apron of thin air condemns us.

An anthem of absolution settles like ash. 

We almost hear the man’s full-voweled confession 

and the salvation susurrated by the Valley’s old priest

because now we’ve seen this penance, the gravity 

of carrying error. The sun continues setting on Tetilla Peak 

in rusted particles. Our village lies below 

in a filigree of light, and a dried coyote jaw 

exposes teeth gnawed by time, its elastic cry expired. 

 first published in Caesura

To Be Still 

Sometimes you have to drive 

through a river basin and a bracelet of cypress 

to find the center of forgetting.

It is practical to be sitting here, 

seeing down to acorns,

unknotting into the umbrella of each tree.

The sky has not fallen, not yet.

If you have to move to be still, 

be satisfied by this. 

Let the world offer the roughed-up edges 

of a stacked wall, each stone talking 

about what it cannot contain. 

Rubbing the day against your small self, 

you realize the pitch of water, 

the crowning balm of lavender.

The sun settles sideways 

on a field of seeded columbine;

the heart of June is the slope of dusk. 

Sparrows and finches sing 

on their absent-minded journey 

past dandelion brush heads.

The red-leafed ash, lobelia and catmint 

all gather nearby – in concentration,

not making a sound.

first published in New Mexico Poetry Review

The First Rain in Eight Months

Its little stammers,

a beautiful sound like an apology—

rain kisses the house, licks mortar and stucco,

keeps searching for more truths, so we won’t know 

any other. This is the reward.

Smells punctuating all of the acres. 

Rain repeats its flung kindnesses 

to the small room all night. 

Screens writhe and streak with long skins 

of water. Rain recites its vows of remaining.

The burning is made into a question.

Rain was. 

It was! 

In the morning, nothing 

of its rich musk—

** first published in New Madrid