The desert ground bloated with rainwater

dries a day later.

Ripped apart at its seams

into a matrix of fractures.

 

What is lightning? Plasma? 

Or the way you stand with your 

Hips square, eyes level, jaw set.

Bare shoulders in a hailstorm, burning. 

Cracked lips opened wide, burning. 

Night air after an illness, burning.

What is lightning? 

 

Lightning over this nylon tent,

over the place where coyotes 

wail, scream, howl.

All its fine branches 

make the world white-hot for an instant,

make me slick with fever. 

 

All the tributaries of this valley,

little cattle streams 

beneath rotten plank bridges

oscillate under our weight. 

Once, weary men stood here and spat into the gully,

Their saliva laces

all the tributaries of this valley.

Little cattle streams.  

 

I lean back on my elbows and

squint hard at the blue heat. 

Imagine my cabin. 

Imagine that I had felled the logs 

and cut the windows 

and chinked the walls 

with river stones and cattail fluff.

The rosy back of her arm. Her and I.

We step lightly around each other and the woodstove. 

I carve her spoons and bowls and keepsake boxes.

I blow my nose with my fingers and

wipe them on the seat of my jeans.

I chew tobacco and turn away to spit into the gully.

I lean back on my elbows and

squint hard at the blue heat.