To cherish an inevitable broken-winged unkindness, blue-black
feathers, a murder’s infinite molt, frantic
trill of the piteousness, the scale-less trout writhing in
the cindered river, the sated rattler dozing beneath the shrike-less juniper
understory while on one berryless upper fractal
a red-eyed cicada stutters through each stylet’s incision.
On the crest of the ridge, beyond algae-ed pool of trapped rain, against
the Caja’s monsoon-gifted grama grass, two bucks
halt and step toward higher ground. Each pair of eyes
trained on me and the black-tongued dog. Deer hides copper against verdigris
brilliance. Eye seeds betray a pair of doves
in the piñon. The killdeer and horned lark, jumping mouse
and vole, unable now to shelter against this drought’s ochre, from killing talon of
kestrel, red-tail or owl. Under sky
without moon, myriad comet fragments fall toward earth.
With them the vanished Beloved may return. Under sky without moon,
my heart, escape
the desert we carry.