From West Texas
       

The javelina crossed the interstate soundtracked by Satie's "Gnossienne no. 2."

"To the northwest of us is a firing range, do not be alarmed at the sounds of."

There was no trail. A tiny family on the summit.

Oil derricks pecking rhythmically at the earth on this our day of thanks.

I wear a pair of old brown boots and my father's jacket.

The population of Alpine dips below 6,000 in accordance with the season.

Suspicion that this world is a collection of seemings, a mixed bag.

My hand reaches for hers in the rented dark.

See the impression of the wind on sagebrush?

Fields of bunchgrass, hoofprints like crescent moons in the sand.

As context shifts so too identity, as in the case of a windmill placed on the bottom of the ocean.

Yucca, juniper, caliche. Like a prepared Turner canvas, the pastel bands of sky.

So tentative each carefully weighted step from stone to stone.

"The source of the ghost lights remains unknown to this day."

Inside the bookshop a girl describes a kestrel, her voice is a wind chime.

Belief I conceal from most people I love that the absence of form will assume a shape.

There are two churches in town and three service stations.

After sundown even the Milky Way must work up the courage.

Election signs wait at the edge of private property.

In his later work, the foreground figures merge with the atmosphere.

What passes here for mountains.

For three years, this famine of the spirit.

When I run out of medicine my experience of the desert sharpens, but I become lost in it.

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Copyright © 2022 Matt Morton All rights reserved
from What Passes Here for Mountains
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission