Dream Beneath the Desert Sky

I’ll show you a place high on a desert plain

Where the streets have no name          –U2

 

Cactus scattered on barren land,

twisted by heat and age.

Smoke trees, desiccated cottonwoods

clustered in dry washes scraped clean

by fiery winds from uncertain distances.

Colors raged away by the passionate light

of the midday sun

(the ancient church feared most the noonday devil).

Blues, greens, reds—drained,

dissolved into deadly white,

stark against black shadow,

like the line that ought to be between good and evil.

Simple, absolute—

the desert is not home to uncertainty.

Many of the world’s religions

were born here.

I walk in the paths of gods and devils,

and the footprints are the same.