Artifacts Poetry, Ray Hinman

The Ex-Missionary Learns Mexico

After the rain we came into the low
country, the hills unrolled beneath us.
pitted with arroyos, green aloevera
concealed basins where water stood,
hidden from high ground like secret lakes.
WE climbed from our horses and looked into
a pond, our faces shinning against sky
and cloud.

There is nothing holy about hidden things,
chance has its own way of breaking monotony
as one mile slinks
into the dust of another; but in this place
(out of millions all over the desert)
what seemed so dry from the rail's rim lay
entangled with fertility, floating
in a bath of sky.

For years I had learned the desert from train
windows, its beauty no more than a swirling dsut, but when our faces rippled over brown roots,
the vistas around us rose in vapor and begged
for a drink,in the distance a vulture called,
and hundreds of cicadas, the hills rose
above us like domes.