Mountains roll and crash; no
open ocean rollers crest
and break as violent as this land.
They shroud their secret gullies
in a distant rain that horses feel
gaping hungry above them,
running frightened –
proud mountains vanish.
Breaching the rise,
we find the plain abandoned.
We cross over, to that resilient mesa,
passing by the dead homesteads
that could not stand the wind, their
yellow grass – overtaken in shadow.
Then, moving between the ancient mesas,
we watch their layered skin dropping away
slowly, till we emerge
in the soft place, in the blurred margins of time.
Distilled sand is coalescing
in still places, hidden between
the standing stones and hollow crooks,
where birds of different hues collect
and the last memory of wind
is whistling as soft as gossamer
falling away.
Re-emerging, where the sky is turning,
rolling across the plains to swallow us.
Where a forest fire is burning
down upon the Western, wide horizon,
lingers and begs pursuit –
unreachable dying flame.