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time to come home... listen to
it in the rustle of the leaves on trees. whispering come
home, come home, come home, home, home...
smell it on the wind. it's time to go home...
grey-green sagebrush scent beckons, carried
on zephyrs bearing a faint rustle of
stink-bug-weed-bells jangling, & an echo
of clanging tincans, hung in trees to keep the thin
legged deer away from the corn & it’s
smooth bright green leaves that whoosh & wave as you
slide through the rows.
come home & lie on a sandstone rock, surrounded
by tiny yellow cliffroses & orange
globemallow & watch tall white billowing
clouds glide across a sky so blue that it makes your
throat tight, about to cry. feel the heat
of the sun in the rock sinking through muscle,
through bone...
come home & feel hot sand under your feet,
sliding through your fingers, thrown across
your face by hot, dry afternoon gusts, kicked
up around long shadowed rabbit brush & salt
weed, flying down the mesas & red hills,
whistling it's own song...
listen to a silence so deep & complete
that your ears hum just to have something to
hear... a silence broken only by locust buzz
in the trees, & gnats whizzing around your ears.
home is where auntie chews her gum ferociously,
the gum is popping & snapping like wet
cedar on the fire, the smoke oozing &
crawling up into the air, a white-grey veil hanging,
waiting, to be dispersed, and the smoke smell
wafts miles & miles making your stomach
squeeze with hunger.
come home and peel potatoes till you hands
are chalky white with potato juice, knead
dough till the skin on your wrists are tight
with drying bread dough. where the kids, the
kids & the lambs are hopping & twisting
across wide open places, because the joy of being
alive splashes in their bellies.
come home & sit outside after a cold bath
at the windmill, under the deep velvet purple
early summer sky. the stars are much further
& not so bright as they were in the winter,
but the night is more delicious, with warm
currents moving across skin cooled by water
from deep inside the earth.
come home... |
