June 2022
Bio Note: I'm lucky in having settled in a part of Phoenix close to the desert mountain park, I believe the largest of all city parks or certainly close. I never set out to invest quite so much of my writing attention on this intersection of urban life and the desert, but that has been very useful to me and created insights I would otherwise have missed. My book-length work Speech Scroll owes much of its content to paying attention to what goes on right here, and was published by Cholla Needles in Joshua Tree, California.
Memory
A rest stop’s just a worn patch
on the back lawn to the Green-
tailed towhee, who
stops a few days every April
on the same bit of ground
beside the bright lantana.
This is where the stars part
and the earth offers its threadbare
welcome after the flight
from Mexico, a place to stop
and gather wind for the final
stretch. Follow the russet crown
in sunlight. Look closely at the white
on eyebrow and chin. Even in
shade the contour is not
to be mistaken for a sparrow. Every
detail fits. And a memory pulls
itself together from
another time, arriving unannounced
on a bare spot in the mind
to stay a while
and forage until
the moment when quickly
it is time to fly to summer’s fields.
The Shadow Within
The top skin flies
from the mountain’s afternoon
and leaves the rock beneath it
open to the starlight’s blessing.
Where does it hurt? the night sky asks,
how deep was the cut? And the constellations
rise with no further
questions. The canyons know,
and all the mesquite trees
can feel in their roots
that a cry is forming
ready to break through
and confess to the skyline
what the darkest layers feel.
©2022 David Chorlton
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