W.I.P.

For the Great Basin Desert

This desert
Used to be a small sea
In the crushing days of glaciers.

Now, bare as an out-turned pocket
It declares its poverty: rock
Sun-blunted smooth as an open palm.
It has lost everything—
Entire rivers,
Mourned by arroyos
Running with stones.
The mesa crackles
With white lines of crystallized salt
That trace, synapse-like
Its memory as ocean floor,
Its most intimate knowledge of water.

I remember you still.
Our stony ages heave to light
As I drop into the canyon:
Toroweap, Hermit Shale
Bright Angel,
Vishnu.
On its sandy floor,
I will walk among the agave
From whose strap-shaped leaves
The men here beat tequila,
For forgetting.