I'm going to close with two short poems.
One takes us back to our own desert here in Tucson.
"A family begins early in a remote spot of the desert.
Hauls well water.
Makes a fire of a bundle of mesquite.
Takes the boiling corn off the fire, grinds it,
roasts poblanos, grinds them, gathers more mesquite,
kills and plucks and cooks a chicken, checks for scorpions,
smells for rain.
The day is strangely over by sunset.
The next day is virtually the same.
Carried along by an iridescent spirit
like a hummingbird in a monsoon, I am made to look in on it.
I can never stay, never finish.
All so delicious, redolent of effort.
A pleasurable melancholy field of stony soil,
I return at will.
But the visit is always cut short by deft soft hands,
going about their fixed business who've
served me I see only now, indifferently, appropriately.
As I excuse myself walking barefoot and shirtless
many miles of tiles from room to room of my modest home,
near the end of another summer with its embattled project,
the jumpy present sends its insubstantial ambulance,
streaking toward the emergency room of my eardrum."