from my unpublished second collection
Bone dry river. Red sand where the water once ran. Boulders that were stepping stones. No cattle.
The wind is never gentle here, merely patient – the mesas could tell you that. The vast fields of scrub grass where nothing we’ve planted ever takes root.
The way the rain floods everything and is gone, is like kindness for a hard heart.
The saguaros never gentle. Tarantulas and scorpions patient because such enduring is all they’re meant to know.
What unlikely archeologist will pick through the ruins of these towns, scratching for things that flash, bits of cloth to line its nest, maybe corn even, in dusty airtight canisters left over from the Collapse, its black wings splayed in delight?
Of our sweet love, that we took to the grave, no record; and of our bones intermingled, calcium and a few trace elements.
Only the human dead more patient than this living rock, which seemed, with its billion year dynasties, and its long thoughts spanning eons, the rightful heirs.
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First published in Ploughshares
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
