Four Poems by David Chorlton

 

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.