I am a creature of the desert

I can be no other, it is my home, I am its son

Though the mountains call, and I go to them, I do not stay

But having drunk deep of shade and pine and mushroom loam

Of cold trickling stream and crystal lake - full of trout

I return to sun and stone and sage

 

I thrust my hands deep into dry earth

Which drinks up sweat that drips from my brow

Reaching for stone, bone, and root

I embrace the land, caked nails, grit and dust

I breath stone, I breath rock

It sustains me, feeds me, I am replenished

Buoyed by dust and agate and chert

 

Silently I converse with the scorpion, we are brothers

We need no words to understand each other

My voice is that of the laughing crows, I am the hawk soaring

The falcon hunting from the cliffs, the mice hiding from the falcon

I am the lizards stopping, scurrying, seeking shade, food

I am the cricket and beetle and spider, hiding from the lizard

 

Shimmering deceptive air beckons, full of promise

I smile and am not deceived, all is illusion

The Sun, relentless Sun, burns down from heaven

I sit on hot rock basking, eyes closed in worship

Until my face grows tight and brown

Wind blows through me, washing soul, lifting

Its song is my song and we sing it together

Now is the time of living! In the cool dark

I hunt with coyotes, yipping and howling

Singing praises to the sky, old nameless songs

Sage, ethereal already, pales further at the sound

Huddling around jackrabbits who too are ghosts

Silent as the owls who seek them

 

I dream prickly pear dreams, of spring rain, desert flowers

I dream snake dreams, basking, hunting, hiding

I dream stone dreams, bluff dreams, taking centuries

I dream the dreams of beetles, lichen, bats, dry grass, and wind

The dreams of juniper, mesas, horned toads, dry bones

Dust dreams, whirlwind dreams, horse dreams

Dreams carved in canyons by floods, on boulders

Red undecipherable sandstone dreams

 

Again and again I return, each time a homecoming

I sit in silence, just listening, just looking

I am a creature of the desert

Sun and stone and sage