Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Kissing Desert, Swooning By The Sea

California,
kissing desert,
swooning by the sea,
lying in defiance of geology,
of eventual, inevitable mutability,
of time ticking beneath shifting sand,
her own unwilling, temperamental bedrock,
eschewing the sanctuary of the Rocky Mountains,
leaving the prairies to time left standing still
in favor of a march to the shining sea,
to glimpse the sun's curtain call
while she can, at last again
despite the dark visage
descending on palms
without promise
of return.