The calculus that what’s beyond the hill must be left at memory’s table A feast not meant to be eaten but pierced at the precise point which leads smoothly into the needle’s nose, hugs the thread snug so thought fleshed out desiccates but doesn’t fall like meat tendering a resignation
The trees are bereft of berries now you would have paused to pick them, grasping at branches just beyond your reach and knees would bruise, ripe as a summer peach disappears, leaving only a sunset stain in the corner of sky’s wordless mouth
Fall’s moist mist is mostly dissipated only wisps of stubborn weed clinging to the hill sides of a bird, her feathers ostrich brown, akin to you whose head swims in the sand the drought has dealt you well you dwell in doubts. The hill still beckons, almost against your will
You are walking. Woodpeckers on tap to open up the trapdoors. Char as far as the eye can roam sinew of auburn manzanitas burned and hacked to pieces reel after reel you can’t unsee the forest’s death, a silent movie plays on, the orchestra a hollow pump, fist of an organ, thumping on and on you walk, to the top, the slope abruptly condescending
The price extracted in perspiration’s penance paid you richly in coin in kind you preened the plumes as a peacock dancing in the rain would scatter a myriad eyes their blue made not of borrowed pigment but out of bent light reflecting ways of seeing nothing multiplying like a hall of mirrors and a single flame
The last house on a dead end road would rise up to fill your eyes first the roundabout, full with aloe and well fed quills of succulents then the porch overhung with ivy so thick even envy would pale away like winter sun
Shining where it once stood where you stand, on scarred earth scabbed into scrub as if after many blows a giant had fallen and through the fresh gap tooth of his maws you saw the valley yawn wide, felt something give
