April 2015
I have about 200 poems in public in many different places, both online and in print, in several countries from the US and UK, to the Philippines and Malaysia. I often write on natural themes, but recently have been responding to odd prompts. I'm a semi-retired teacher in California.
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from The Alfalfa Chronicles: in which we take an imaginary drive around the West to visit some small towns and rural areas. We have looked at roads, dying towns, people, the desert. We have ignored the land itself, vast spaces of dirt, hills, dust, peaks and sinks where rivers go to die. The West that killed men as they crossed over, scrabbling for survival. |
Considering Mountains
the question is not why that mountain
is ragged or dark as chocolate at noon
or even why there are dry crumbling
gullies, but why any land exists here
not vast blue oceans filled with slashing
ichthyosaurs, or why dark and tan layers
stand vertically, cut by rivers flowing
north across an ancient gravel bench
why land rises at all, bare, substantial
not molten flows or ash-covered a mile
thick, or eroded to dust, why ocean
basins fall, flooding the land again
until islands appear where once rock
stood in granite crystals or even why
the land was gashed so deep the river
is invisible below, its silent flowing
below the rim, a space so vast cities
could be lost here, or hawks and mice
at their eternal play— watching, waiting
swooping, scampering— these questions
remain even as we note the presence
of basins and ranges, cliff dwellings
and tiny steps cut into the mesas, shards
of painted vessels, our own lost origins
Nightdark, Daylight
Turn around:
see the range in that state
bare desert uplift nakedly
pink at the end of sunset
the light held a moment
before turning purple-gray—
night falls.
Turn again:
find the mountains here
rocky crags stubbled
with piñon catching
the first yellow light
on their peaks, holding
it an instant before day
spills down the salt flats—
morning arrives.
Down to the Colorado River
The land slopes like a tilted board
then slips again, a slumping,
sloughing of recent lava flows
that broke through the desert floor
the road falls, slides down more,
again reaches an edge and drops
another level, rises momentarily
then sinks once more to the wide
Colorado River unseen until the final
downhill and then not until the very
bottom and you have descended
four thousand vertical feet from
howling peaks to gray water sliding
past bare white and chocolate cliffs
on the far side and the air is still,
two horned owls call together as
they hunt the steep hills for mice.
Now the full moon rises benignly,
not some gnashing white-toothed
dragon wind from a black ridge.
©2015 Emily Strauss