Looking out living room window
sacred Datura’s winter branches
drape clumsy on each other,
their brown tangle seeps in grey air
near the pile of rocks too heavy to move—
misshapen eggs, dropped unbroken
from an unseen giant in the sky.
Three months now in my bisected life.
I scattered your heavy white—
North Rim sunset, kiva at Lost City Museum.
For five days I did this thing.
Glen Canyon Dam wind swirled you
up around my head, patina on my arms,
my tongue licked a pink highway
across the back of my hand.
Last stop, the plant you loved best.
I dusted it with you—
you, translucent like its trumpets
who sing one day long.
It was summer in that lazy heat
when we built this home,
dismantling the double wides
where men with young brides
had started marriages.
We worked side by side until
our own re-purposed, polished lives
shone in this desert where a footprint,
you told me, lasts five years.
Last night rain drenched it all.
This morning the holy ground
still damp, the Datura dry—
washed clean to the bone.
