Ragha

1. Red Desert Sod Black Rock Road

Here, forty-degree
And higher temperatures
Are routine

Until autumn, and yet
Few nights breathe during
Which water, conceivably

Could not freeze. This
Is the landscape of true,
Revealed religion. Seethe,

The dust and your gods
Whom you believe, inscrutably,
Breeze beyond me.

 

2. Devices

I flatter the natural world.
I am an irrigation canal

A mule-pulled water wheel,
An Archimedean screw,

A backyard sprinkler system
Fueled by monsoons in the desert.

I am mud. I am dry. I am
A surveillance photograph

From a chopper, from a drone
Kicking up dust. Beautify. Desertify

The hanging gardens of Balkh,
Of never, said Ezra, in Babylon.

We're so righteous the sparrows
Keep their bathing eyes on us.

3. Zion

No, not that one.
This one. Right mind
And wrong mind

Said Zarathustra, who
Knew. Pastoral or
Pastoralist, who knew?

The longhorns graze the green sod
In their paddock, far, far
From origins, so close to home.