A road so rough you can’t imagine going on yet you persist believing in the space and the light and the sweet desert breeze so comforting and enveloping.  Air so light as to be devoid of substance save for the fragrance of creosote and sage, cool in the rare shade where a trickle of water allows those in need to find solace.

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The Water Drip

Dry country, heat rising from the jagged rock
dust covered like a thin blanket draped over the
old bones of earth
Hard light, shining down from a sun so close
ricocheting off the landscape like glass splintering
the shards piercing an awakening silence

The water falls ever slowly upon a rock set in shade
sun sparkles off the wet surface like
diamonds so scattered
moist earth extending in a cool darkness
over the parched fabric of desert soil

He came one day in search of water
an old male lion ragged and desperate
down from the butte tawny and thin
like the country around him
He won’t last long they said, but neither will this
cisterns near empty and rain staying away
the dryness will take them

Nature content with preservation of kind leaves
the care of individuals to those few compassionate
ones trucking water up a broken rock road with it’s
ruts and holes to this sanctuary
Some say why, crazy maybe, how can she do it
Indeed, how can she not

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The Cemetery at Terlingua

At dusk we came to walk among
the old stones, a lavender afterglow in
the eastern sky like a curtain slowly
descending to muted applause

Who are these then lying beneath rock
and weathered cross, unknown but not
forgotten, their resting place adorned
festively in trinket and bead, votives in
the grotto with a Santo carefully placed

Out of San Carlos they came, migrants
to work the quicksilver mines, crossing
the river for work dangerous and hard
a better life all that was sought

Gone now these, struck down in youth
unmarked and unnamed though still
they come, always the young strangers
eager to work with rivers to cross

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Terlingua cemetery photo by Ron Morris

“I think life’s meaning is to create and share”,  Carolyn Ohl-Johnson, Christmas Mountain Oasis, Texas

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Broken Rock Road

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