Ode to Cerro Pedernal
Jagged rocky mountain silhouettes
stretching cross frame, across entire worlds
dreaming of stars hung in purple navy sky
Wild white glow of light to separate sky and ridge,
sky and sloping peak and canyon immense below
Bony stoic plateau silhouette standing holy
and sacred, topping peaking reeling over
bulging oozes of sandswept hills
climbing into mountains, into heaven
behind windows of black cosmic pane
Pedernal, I am locking eyes with you
Show me your endless gaze in all
cardinal directions, golden sunrise east,
golden sunset west—and I’ll watch you fade
into silent pure black of great desert night
where I am one with you
Sunrise over Sandia
…
The West
I’ve seen the west
and it’s shining golden in all of its eternities
On sand rock mountains billowing infinite
into unending jet blue sky, that white sun
raining down blankets on red rock canyons
stoned in wake of deep green pine valleys
forever enshrined in spiraling days left behind
on empty physical plane, but burned in smoky
forefront gleam of Rocky Mountain mind
returning to sad narrow city streets where you
can’t see ten feet in front of you, but here
you see into heaven, into vast plain infinities
and everything is holy, breathing living enchanted
on all these rocks and summits and valleys
and immense orange canyonlands laying west
of marauding Mississippi River by midnight
Wild wild west,
it’s golden forever in my mind
Dancing samba, grooving waltz
from old sunrise to new sundown
And that moonrise will never end,
it’s all expanding beneath those
trillion stars gleaming above,
Milky Way dreams in holy silence
of desert, where everything expands
forever and nothing ever ends
