If Senses

look

see the sun
scraped wallpaper
green wind
damp soap on a shower wall

see hushed sage
needle bush
red brome

see silo

grain lost to echo
see bike chains
wheelbarrows

styrofoam melted in ash pits
a glass of cold beer
a gold doorknob in morning light

see scour

train tracks
tractor dust
see propane bottles

redtop
patches of rain
dyed wool

touch

the spooned
crow
swimming
in the pond
with sunfish
their spine
touching
the bottom
of the sky
at my feet
a mountain
licked
smooth
by
the monsoon
above it
the
memory
there
in the
riftsawn
sand
shored
on its wing

taste

a splinter a bullet a dark hole a country
lick clean
igneous rock water runoff an oil spill

a gender a wild rice a book
tongue
copper mines chemtrail a squall line

a pedal an envelope a growing storm
suck dry
the air a hurricane ocean fuck, the ocean

smell

horses digging for water

horses sinking into trees

horses naming more horses

singing

field sinking into a name

field digging for trees

field naming water

singing

morning digging

morning water sinking

morning naming all the trees

singing

listen

the door the winter oil the lung
the deer ; their leap its croon its thrush
its opacity a cold front an open porch

the clasp the entryway the collared sleeprock
the caress of another morning : its crash
its curtains dragged along a canyon wall

the splendor the yucca string the monument
the horses ; their lilt its halt their sigh
its low hum the trees all one labored breath

the aquarium the bottle of soda with peanuts
the hospital ; its gray overcast sky
the crying—oh, yes the crying

then, dream

a beautiful land, free

dream time unspooled from its barbed wire
its border wall
its pipeline
its blockade

dream a thousand suns
even more their absence
dream the darkness
how it carries the sound of us
from every river
to every sea

Source: Poetry (March 2025)