We displaced and desperate people of the high desert,
We sunburned and murderous pioneers,
We scrabbling, subduing, culture-confused saints,

Have learned to expect a harsh hand from the earth,
The sand-filled winds, Seven-month winters, constant drought warnings,

And we know there is virtue in weathering the dry cold, dry heat, dry springs,
Not a self-flagellation to assuage guilt (forwehavenonenorshouldwenorwillweever),
Just a beauty-in-adversity, refining fire, cold-hard-reality type of thing,

So that when a freak hurricane sends rain (real rain) inland from the west coast and we wake up to
Mist burning off in the rising sun, dampness and health that briefly revives the brown grass and
Creates the dew-covered, glistening effect we know only from vacations,

The intrusion of the outside world into our skin and nose and hair is a foreign feeling,
And tied up in some unformed idea of loss, or a sacrifice we didn't realize we keep choosing to make, or an ancestral home, or innocence bartered for independence, or a secret forest clearing we pictured as a child and that used to carry a... feeling... with it and why does it not anymore-

And the relief!  When the pores constrict again, mid-afternoon, and the skin is vulnerable only to the clean and negligible corrosion of wind and time

Mercy

Everything We Do

I transfer her,

From my large white bed to her small pink one,

And if I'm not careful when laying her back down,

She tenses up for just a moment,

Feeling like she's falling,

I hate that tensing,

So bend at the knees,

And keep her weight on me,

Until the mattress can seamlessly take over

Somehow just now, today, I have grown old,

Without the wisdom or security or really even the years that I think that usually accompany this,

My parents are better with their phones than I am,

My daughter smarter with her money,

My wife more creative and social,

I try to follow the Tai chi movements on a YouTube video, but lack the energy,

And desire,

To keep up

Closing the right eye, life is crisp and stark and marvelously detailed,

Closing the left, it is weathered and soft, with the harsher realities muted and manageable

Next Time Around

I plan to return
As a bare-breasted Ama,
Smiling in the spray