Topophilia

Sun, mud, rabbit sage, parched.
Skin brittles, chastened and chapped.

Sheltering cliffs framed the high flat plain in
an irregular semicircle I interpreted as protection.

Summer did not take me by the throat but unfurled
a giant’s weathered hand in greeting.

Some kind of embrace given the red sand
dusk where dust is wind’s emissary

where the brick mesa song blistered
piping down canyons

thunderheads miles visible, splayed stars
redirecting the buzzards’ night roosts.

There were smaller threats—spider, scorpion, rattler—
but the mesa’s arms surrounded me. Stone prevails.

Safety shouldered its way into the frightened
little story of my life. I felt at home.

Thicket

Behold the thicket:
it is deep with brambles.
It is blackberries in July,
wineberries in August.
……………Move, and the thicket
……………impedes you, catches
……………your sleeve,
plucks you awake.
The bee is here. The spider.
The thicket is alive, and crawling.
Green with jewelweed to salve
rashes from the thicket’s
poison ivy. Green with prickly
horsenettle, coarse pokeberry,
the brilliant, twining nightshade:
……………thickets sweat poisons
……………as well as fruits.
I have brought you here to show
that you can never get through,
not unscathed, not without
brutality of some kind:
the saw, machete, knife.
This tangle no amount of patience
will ever undo –
……………it will overtake you,
……………grow into your hair,
……………invite warblers in to nest,
……………spiders to unfurl their orbs.
You must learn not to hate
before entering the thicket.
You must acknowledge all its ways
to understand its wild embrace.