Ghost Desert

Today, the angels are closer,
Weightier, a blanket of wings
That never have to beat or fly
Covering lives in frozen light.

Scintillation from the hubcaps
Across dunes to the horizon,
Overwhelmingly white on white,
Floating up into pale heaven,

That's what we've got here. Inversion
Has brought the upper atmosphere,
The true desert of thin gasses
Down as a sterile reminder

To the living, complaining soul
Of the earth that every dry ounce
Of burnt-red, barren-seeming dirt
Is a luscious jungle of love

Compared to what's always up there--
Crowding angels of vacancy
Peering with their blank, saucer eyes
From their vast and abstract faces

Filled with incuriosity
Down at the crawling existence,
The near two-dimensional wars,
Of our hearts that keep on going.