Chiricahua Afternoon by David Chorlton

It’s a slow afternoon with the books
leaning gently, one
against another all along the shelf
where chronicles of wildlife
and gunfights spend
their dusty lives waiting for a hand
to take them down
for study. An old wooden rocker
creaks on the sunlit floorboards
on the porch facing all weathers
and the peak
on a mountain whose slopes
have borne every sky from fire
to blue frost. The mice in the walls
are resting. The snake beneath the bedroom
waits for the monsoon to break.
Turn the page and thirty
seconds later the smoke clears
on the Clanton-McLaury gang
and the minutes pass
on deer steps through the grass
and mesquite shadows.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world. A new book, Unmapped Worlds, is out from FutureCycle Press. He recently took up watercoloring again, after twenty dry years.