How Night Survives / Spirit Face by David Chorlton

How Night Survives

The blue desert unrolls

beneath a full moon whose light

snags at the tip

of every needle on saguaros leaning

up against the darkness.

The day’s last hummingbird turns into a leaf

that turns into a star that turns

into the all-seeing eye

in the sky: such are miracles

 

where a bobcat flies

from peak to peak

and coyotes run faster than time can

pursue them, back, back,

back to when God rode on horseback

to claim all the land. But the dry air

 

fought back and made of thirst

a prayer for the life

even of the scorpion

whose sting points the way for the

spirit to follow.

 

Spirit Face

 

The poster stared from every summer

window in business next to business next to

where the trail begins

that leads to the ridgeline holding up

the sky. Out walking, nowhere in particular

 

to be, just a spirit loosened from

the mind, lost and drawn to desert light,

just the lure of distance

beyond distance and the curiosity late

in life to find what meaning means.

One dizzy step, a rock

 

to lay her head on,

heat that dreamed its way out through her eyes,

all paths leading to the sun

and the sun takes every offering,

 

gives nothing back.

David Chorlton lives within reach of the desert park that interrupts the urban flow of Phoenix. His newest book is "Poetry Mountain" from Cholla Needles in Joshua Tree, CA, which draws extensively on his immediate surroundings and its wildlife.