Sunday, September 16, 2012

On the Trail

Twenty nights of my lonesome, twenty times I’ve listed my fires
by giving heed to all that surrounds.

A fire is ever changing and cannot be bound to uniqueness
without jack rabbit pellets, empty cacti, mice hoarding for home.

Despite all the mountains I have staggered footprints upon, I’ve read
the Earth is smooth in scale, with a finish finer than an 8-ball of equal size.

My struggles and fires, camps and correspondence, they summit
no great peaks. No Atlas hefts the weight of my life atop his shoulders.

Or, if he does, it garners no notice, for his part.
I believe in fire.

I mourn the stars that have already collapsed; their final shimmers
of death stretch for light years across the moonless Mojave.

I will not cry out for the world any longer, for my words and life
are ever changing. Better to be a fire, better to drift up into the night

fulfilling no more purpose than the Colorado River
or the great boulders of Southern California.