Desert Moon from “The Weight of Snow”

DESERT MOON

Gibbous moon over Sea of Cortez,

now black in the night.

I wake to sounds of whales surfacing

in the calm bay, stirred

from dreams of catching the dorado,

only to watch the dimming of the impossible colors:

indigo, mustard, viridian, crimson.

And I, haunted by my selfish guilt,

wishing to undo it

and give the fish back to the sea,

ask to what end do we betray the earth

if not through the armistice of death?

What of that difference

between lion and lamb?

We are not saints,

these last wild places

disappearing.

Desert wind twists through dry arroyo

and pires of cardon, dust-green saguaro cactus.

A gull, yet to roost, weeps from the sand.

 

c. 2014 B. L. Bruce, excerpt from “The Weight of Snow”