There’s a way out—
walk the dirt road into cerulean dawn,
tap the windows of cars and trucks
rattling down highway 77
with clear fingerprints,
and clasp the nine eyes of the desert
shut at the intersection of then and now.
Ask: will this whirlwind
connect to that one,
making them cousins to the knife?
Will lake mist etched
on flakes of flood-birthed moonlight
hang its beard on a tow truck
hoisting up a buck,
butterflies leaking from its nostrils,
dark clouds draining off its cedar coat?
Copyright © 2018 by Sherwin Bitsui. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 6, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.