In Buffalo Park: A Poetry Cycle

1
Air like stone
drags down the weary heads of sunflowers
with the indifferent weight of silence.
The sun,
already sinking into the cradle of the mountains,
sends out the last rays of the day
like naked arms brushing past the branches
of pine trees in the borderland.
Spectral hands groping among the stalks,
rifling through the temporary
and expired architectures of blooming,
of broadcast.

These emptied witnesses of summer,
now stooping in autumnal air,
speak of nature’s efficiency:
there will be no waste.
Yet how they waste away,
how their cry for life, more life, has been forgotten,
ignored in the season of deterioration
that already has started to break them down
in the conservation of energy.

Promises of fertility
now fulfilled
now spent
now fit kindling for the fire,
which is second only to the sun in marking time’s movement.
It is impossible to separate change from consumption.

Next summer
nothing will remember that these sunflowers were.
The greening field, astonished at the new growth,
will marvel at the naïve miracle.

2
Though stunted and broken
the slopes of the San Francisco Peak
suggest lines,
invisible dashes
that extend beyond the physical heap of rock
and connect earth with sky.

Today, clouds have gathered at the summit.
They have become the homes of kachinas
who will send the rain—
sprinklings of dashes,
momentary cords that link
all beings to each other.

Change comes.
The afternoon sun grows shadows.
The grasses and birds, lichen and deer plead with the sun
to disobey its course away from them,
forgetting that it is their earth
that moves them away from the light.
They know predators need no other invitation to begin
the feast of dark hours.
When the sun sets
the Peak will cover itself with a veil
of crows’ feathers.

3
The formation of a cloud is a mistake
taken as an opportunity.
The same wind that bends
each stalk of grass
with caressing fingers,
reaches up
and stretches clouds out until they cover miles,
carving shape out of nothingness until
sweeps of color appear
and reappear
and change.
Backdrops for whatever light the sun
or the moon
is willing to give.

Neighborhoods of water particles and dust,
clouds are distorted mirrors
that reflect beams of light
and transform them
into the substance of being.