Long Shadow Cowboy
All the way out here.
Cigarettes have to be passed back and forth
On concrete slabs
Meant for water
All the way out here
All the way up here
To hone the edge
Trading all that power of lonesome for the crush of confusion
A 3-finger pinch
Instead of that poem I never wrote you
About that thing I never told you
I was just too busy
Reading about cowboys
Trying on envy
The warm wind blows
Haunting, announcing Fall
Tousling the dried leaves
Of our summer season
Mulching them into unrecognizable patterns
Fragile with auburn-brown edges
Dry memories
Of what tanned legs pumped for
Up hardscrabble hills
Just to lay in front of the white litter
Arms held in exhalation
Cupped hands dipping prayers into cisterns of warm water.
Walk carefully; take only what is thriving
Make moss flowers with what's fallen
It's seed season, don't fear the fire
Still, the birds sing
even as the sacred place
and the oracle oak
burns as it should
On it goes
Unceasing
With or without us
The rose drops everything we love.
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Presence is not the first to declare itself
Its absence rings the gong
Love is the silent walker.
A breath of something from beyond