Poetry
Noon Crossing
The river is a glutton for noon sun,
hones its light to a field of silver blades,
blinds me with its crooked arm that reaches
through desiccated oaks, holds boulders
Red Cowboy Sixty Snake Sweep
A fragment with a certain poetry of its own
remembered so often that it’s been worn
from a memory, to a recollection, to an auditory resuscitation
of a life left long ago.
Too often I forget things.
Only remembering them when they are left undone
or their immediacy returned by a smell or a taste
or a picture of a familiar someone
though I don’t quite remember his name.
the bank, ponder why I cross here, plunging
from same to same, risking my old gelding’s
footing against the treacherous bottom.
Maybe it’s an old, repeating dream
I indulge: a vision of myself seen
from high above, crossing where Indians
crossed bareback, honoring the slow water
that slaked a parched landscape, sluiced life
across thirsty brown land. From a height shared
only by hawks, I can’t discern my saddle’s
shape, nor see that Davy’s slick flanks are bare,
unmarked by prints of painted hands. Can’t hear
Andrew T Ross
my own wild whoop as we haul ourselves out
on the other side, drops whirling off us,
darkening dirt and scree where they land,
drying in moments, as though we’d never passed.
Sanderson to Alpine
(A Pantoum)
The scene in my rearview mirror never varies,
An endless strip of blacktop, burnt landscape and sun-bleached sky.
Acres scorched by fire, fronds struggling to emerge from blistered cactus bodies,
The view through the windshield is always changing.
An endless strip of blacktop, burnt landscape and sun-bleached sky,
Sunshine and shadows play on mountaintops, highlighting crevasses and parched growth,
The view through the windshield is always changing.
I imagine prehistoric oceans sculpting this land in a distant past.
Sunshine and shadows play on mountaintops, highlighting crevasses and parched growth,
Dustdevils jump up feinting moves to further crumble these ancient forms,
I imagine prehistoric oceans sculpting this land in a distant past.
I see continuing erosion evident in sliding slabs of rock.
Dustdevils jump up feinting moves to further crumble these ancient forms,
Desiccated, windblown grasses are dried to the shade of platinum,
I see continuing erosion evident in sliding slabs of rock,
The scene in my rearview mirror never varies.
Susan Weeks
14
in its elbow. My buckskin flicks his ears back
for my cluck, splashes in, steadies against
the current. Halfway across I glance behind,
stare back at hungry-rooted trees that claw
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2012
Ricki Mandeville