Here the widening Land gathered, jumbled, at its life’s edge
Swelling its softening summerscapes. Dry billowing winds
Traipsed joyfully along a distant sinking horizon line in the
West. Now seen from the bullying cloud-crowded sky, a tiny
Trawling river traces its way, burrowing into and through its
Red raw striated canyons, now riven, side versus stretching
Side, touching Earth’s shrinking troubled three seasons,
Casting off the yoke of civilization unheeded through Millennia.
There, trysting dust-drawn shadowshapes floated, out beyond
Lessening heated scrub, the desert fitfully yielded its spiked
Cactused bounty, quietly, hidden treasure stored up for all
Seasons. A coyote-gnawed bleached bone lay, bare. Rolling
Waves of sand – rising, cresting, breaking, reformed – littered
With a dead sea’s cracked detritus, ran off at a hundred teetering
Compass points, falling off an imaginary edge there in wholly
Uncertain nature-safe beige-painted middle distances.
A saddened man-shrunk forest, aged, weary, palsied trees, less
Certain than in eons past, shrugged drooping branches and
Uncertainly showered a waiting faunaed floor in confused curiously
Colored seasonless leaves. Now predators lingered hungrily at the
Edge, the outgoing browned clearing seared of retreating life. A
Failing lushness marked a baked boundary. Rains have gone from
Here, felled. The skies struck, holding aloft thinning cloud protest
Placards. “Where have the caretakers gone,” the drying ink read.
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