Ojo Caliente: Metamorphoses
       

1.
The summer was shattering.
Too much pressure and heat
change the nature of stone.
For this, we walk a dry path
under the spiraling flight of two eagles
disappearing into blue.

2.
The lightness ofletting go is good to sink into.
Golden and afloat, leaves drift, sonorous
in their descent. We pass ancient villages,
small mounds along the stony path. Peaks
blue in the distance shimmer under snow.

3.
Along the trail, we look for snakes
in cool cracks of granite.
The magnitude of the day opens,
a way in. Mica gleams from dark caves,
flaked light, glass.

4.
Nothing lasts forever.
Even here, the gods of heat and water
break through red stone into steamy pools
of sulfur, arsenic, iron.

5.
A woman with cats on her socks wanders
across a bluff. Bodies are sanctuaries
ofloneliness. We remember to look up,
find the fingernail of a moon.

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Copyright © 2017 tinacarlson All rights reserved
from Ground, Wind, This Body
University of New Mexico Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission