Keeping Still

A peregrine beats
into heavy, hot wind.
A pinyon bough breaks
and tumbles down a crag.
Wind whips the twigs of a nest
scattering them north.
Stones stand while
their worn faces surrender
a few more grains to populate deserts,
their backs smoothed
by the passage of wind;
they settle in earth
and, at night, sun-heat
pulses from their bowels---
snakes coil and uncoil beneath them.

---- Poem by James Milner