Roadrunner
There goes a lost thought with a long tail
up and out of the arroyo
with sunlight strumming a tune
on his nerves. A second look
and he disappears.
And suddenly returns
from behind a fallen saguaro,
an incomplete sentence
whose last word trails
from the beak. No time to stop and search
for meaning.
He’s elegance with
a joker’s face. Never makes appointments.
A distraction that doesn’t indicate
what it is distracting from.
Unmistakable.
Familiar. Yes, going back to the beginning,
before the desert,
before mountains,
there was nothing to chase except
the escaping heartbeats of stones.
The Carp
There lies a carp decaying
on grass beside the pond with eighteen inches
of its spine stripped bare
and the skin on what body remains
blackened in plain view.
The water can’t remember
what pulled it from the bank;
it simply performs
its liquid duty of reflecting sky. The Buffleheads
don’t know and the Black phoebe
never saw
the dark maneuver
by which three shining feet of silver
was dragged into the sunlight
that keeps on nibbling
where wildlife found the taste too bitter
to continue
and finally reveals
creation’s bone.
Sitting
From the chair between four palms
set in a corner quietly beside
what one day will become a grapefruit tree
and the willow with its first
leaves breaking through the stem
the back yard looks to be at rest aside
from Lesser goldfinches and whatever
causes them to scatter
before they settle back. A cloudbank
dominates the eastern sky, impasto
at the crest and washed
in grey from where the city ends
to desert resting gently on the Earth
at the far side of sunset. Last night’s rain
climbs back out from the ground
and helps the brittlebush to flower.
Early March, lantana volunteers a garden
full of colour where hummingbirds
are busy to the last breath
of light. Almost time the owl flies down
from the stars to question who we are
and where we’re from, which neither
faith nor science seems to know
but sitting in a quiet place reveals
darkness has a heart.
In the Beginning
I want to reconsecrate things as much
as possible, I want to remythicise them.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Before there was a wingbeat
to set the shiver free
that turned into the moon, before a mountain fell
from the unmapped sky,
before quail and mockingbirds and orioles
who trailed fire when they flew
came thunder loud enough
to touch.
So did the moment pass in which
all beginnings began. No advance notice.
No cooling winds. A patch
of winged sunlight descending
to the ridgeline beneath
which spiny lizards first opened their eyes to see
themselves glow, becoming myth
in tiny dragon scales.
David Chorlton is a European who has lived in Arizona since 1978 and found the desert to be a beautifully introspective land. He makes his home in Phoenix, fortunate to be close to the extensive desert mountain park that runs through the city. His interests beyond poetry run to birds, music from diverse sources from medieval to modern and painting.
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