Six Sonnets: Crossing the West

Desert heat, high clouds, and sky

the color of lapis. On this journey,

anything seems possible,

so we stop by an ancient cottonwood

to kiss. The beauty trembles,

doesn't say a word, just watches

me, so open. Small birds fly by, flock

in the shady tree above us. What

settles in her heart? What congeals?

Hope? Despair? Far off, the river churns

in its sandy banks, swallows veer, turn

in fiery air. Will these kisses seal

her to me? I her lover, she my wife?

Is all of this a dream, my whole life?

She is just this side of wonderful,

and suddenly the glamorous world

fills itself with shining and we laugh

at highway monuments that explain

how hard the trek had been for Franciscans

in the Indian wilderness, poor fellows—

conversion is the devil's own

work! Then the stones of her dream

turn up under her feet, the back

of a huge land turtle. I know

we must be circling Paradise

because the ants enter the fleshy petals

of the roadside flowers with evident

joy and purpose (oh, my dark, pretty one).

Music, my adored. When is there never

music? My accordion puffs up

with drinkable melodies. I spill

her tunes into your listening ear,

one after the other: the squeeze-box

enters the dance of the plaintive gypsy

with its hard rhythms, lilts the back-

breaking labor song the worker croons

to earth, warbles romantic notes of

dissolving borders. You melt

like a woman beneath her lover's touch.

Music is happy and pitiless when

it sets fire to combustible souls. Even

the raspy bandoneon's voice is lyric.

Sacred. Sacred. Sacred. Sacred. (Speak

in a whisper.) We slip into this

space half cognizant. The land is very

large indeed: bones of the earth

worn down, though she is a living thing.

See how she exposes her grace? Antelopes

graze on the far plain—their high,

white tails—the red soil throbs

its slow heartbeat, and the blue sky

clears so smartly, perfectly, like

radiance. Are the ancestors near?

What can we know? We decide

to wander around this prairie, mistaken

for Utes, buy commodities in little towns.

Late afternoon we head west along the willow-banked

Malheur after the long curve of the Snake River plain.

(Above the falls where the Shoshone went to pray

we soaked our feet in cold water, and I observed

the arch of her brown foot.) Rabbitbrush and sage

along the highway, juniper on far hills and bluffs.

Sundown, and dusk falls over the wide basin of land.

In Burns we eat eggs in a cafe, take a room

in the Motel 6. In the dark, I can see

her black hair, black against the pillows. Its clean

scent makes me think of corn. At dawn, I hold her

and there are kisses. Then more kisses. Then more.

The day is cold; a north wind blew last night. But

the land is open. Rain falls in showers of light.

Her hand on my thigh, my shoulder,

in my hair. She leans over to kiss my cheek.

We look at each other, smile. For miles

we travel this way, nearly silent, point

with eyes or chins at the circling hawk, the king-

fisher on the snag above the swollen

creek. One night I weep in her arms

as she cries, "Oh, oh, oh!" because I have touched

her scars lightly: throat, belly, breasts.

In that communion of lovers, thick sobs

break from me as I think of my love

back home, all that I have done

and cannot say. This is the first time

I have left her so completely, so alone.

Queer Love Poems