December 2021
Bio Note: I am an Anglo-Austrian who has lived the Southwest for four decades. Poetry has taken a lot of my time, as has painting and gradually discovering the nuances in the desert landscape. In the part of Phoenix where I now live pieces of the wild come into the urban setting and as I type this I'm watching a Red-tailed hawk circling nearby, and it isn't unusual for a coyote to be walking nonchalantly along the street, much in the way ideas for writing occur on a good day.
Sun Down
All day the sunlight
climbs the mountain, passes through
saguaro stems, parts
mesquite branches to clear
a little space, steps
stone to stone and stops
a moment at the crest before
slipping down the far side
making room for night wings
to wrap up all unfinished
business and set it
down for the coyotes to divide
among themselves; they
who waste nothing
and for whom
night is only the universe
blinking.
Indifference
Nature is not exactly stimulating . . .
—Liza Lim
A coyote turns to sunlight. He doesn’t care
who’s watching. And the mountain
shrugs a lightning streak away without
moving a muscle. The nighthawk
stitching dusk to dark puts on
a coat of stars as it
wheels about the streetlamps, giving
no thought to what the ground thinks.
Even the moth
with history’s dust on its wings
comes to fire as though it were only
light dancing.
©2021 David Chorlton
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