Desert Trek Poem by David Saltaire

Here is a vast fossil of sea
I wind through torn rock.
The sun is a disc of fierce desire
that pushes down on my soul
a gravity of heat focused on my chest
radiating my bones enervating my eyes...

but I don’t hide
I sweat saline pasts
and connect.

I may shade my face
and be crowned with thorns
I may listen for silence
and hear it like a question.
Like heat-waves I may hover
over sand, sky, Spanish Bayonet.
I may lead a band of ancient horses
to the Green River
I feel no need to question, no false need
to sing feebly from a dry mouth.

I put one foot
in front of the other.
I connect.

I come to the sheer facade
a living wall etched
with dumb memories
An extrusion of unimaginable scar
scoured clean by sweet sand
thrown up from ten thousand storms.
The juniper tree leans back against it like a crutch
flattens its trunk, tells its innocent tale
single-minded and pure
it has been singing there
for a hundred years.

Lizards are watching
with dispassionate, greedy eyes
I remember.

Here, along the tumbled miles
are the marks of other men
turned long since into a feast of bones
for coyotes, vultures and ants;
their signs communicate
a world of Eagles, of hunters
of design and will and even
strange gods who watch with hollow eyes
who cannot be prayed to
or sacrificed to. Once ever-present and feared
these gods have no names and no magic.

They watch, malevolent
and blind
names forgotten.

Weary for the road
for the silver bullet,
for the closed in comfort of my
modern Charon.
I’m putting my hand in cool sands
cleaning them before making sacrifice
on a vast sea of gases.
She eyes me with clocks and phone numbers
nodding, grinning, waiting
She knows I'll return
like an opportunistic lover
however much I'd wish to live
in a blaze of scentless glory.

I’ll not drown
nor will I float
I will connect.

I’ll climb the Spider Rock
I’ll cry out in De Chelly
I’ll glimmer in sapphire skies
I’ll pipe an exhausted song
roll like a dislodged rock
I will lose myself in evening shadows of cool ink
I will emerge from the Kiva
I will sound a deaf warning.


I will disappear in dusk.
I will remain no more.