you have it all to yourself because
no one else pays attention at this hour —
the lake

is an invisible black edge of the earth
that a glowing gold claw pierces to draw
off from the dark rest of the sky —

up along the line its
crescent moon scythes
its circle around    the earth   silver as a fish

on this spinning line
you can reel in           to some sense for yourself

or let its rip
open in yourself the darkness
that swims your blood wild its whirling uncaught.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

People say there’s a smell that comes before 
a rain. I’ve smelled it, too. 

Before time engraved on mountainsides. 
Before petroglyphs, 
or Butterfield Stagecoach, 
before Mexico or the USA. 

Dust and warm dust. One learns not to touch 
or pet or pick. I live
two miles from the Deming tracks. 

The tiny red pepper I grew
didn’t burn my mouth 
until I bit into the yellow seed. 

Soggy thundered air tries to cool us. 
Nightshade, dark green summer night. 
Spadefoot toad neighbors in warm, sticky mud. 

Many of our people have lived 
long, their eyes tell you.

How the train persists. 

Interstate 10 rolls town, dead skunks 
in the middle 
of the pavement. 

Clouds hearing silence 
touch space. The mountain changes the afternoon.

Finally the sound, blue to purple. 
Mourning doves on every branch. 

^{*This collective poem was assembled from responses by residents in the city of Deming, NM, and is part of the New Mexico Epic Poem Project.}

Here, at this half-ass state park without a sign, 
              with its cracked concrete bench and triangle of dying 
cottonwoods, the Missouri joins the Mississippi, 
              meeting not like a ballet, or a twisting 
of silk scarves, but maybe like construction workers, shaking 
              hands before a building forever half-built. 
And what is there to do now but love this unfinished work 
              of the river, carrying everything it has ever been 
given: snow-melt streams like a cold bandana circling
              its neck, shreds of styrofoam cooler catching 
in its teeth, sturgeon eggs blooming with their translucent 
              tails, nitrates, and phosphates, and soil glittering 
with bone, and this single mountain dew bottle 
              eddying in a green-tinged foam, and the ashes 
of Oceti, reddening in all of our throats. I sit with my knees 
              tucked to my chest, listen to the ducks call 
each other from either side of what will be 
              the same water, and River, you and I both know 
that despite your dams, you will go on
              to grow deadly algae in the Gulf, to feed rich 
alluvial plains, shelter alligators and hellbenders and mudpuppies, 
              to have done to you and to do the most beautiful 
and terrible things. We know the word end 
              is never an end, but always a mouth instead.