ishmael (i)

somewhere between where it's too dry for a joshua tree
and where the sage rises in clusters, and
where the winter stream-beds carve across the plain,

I left something by a rise in the road.

the crack in the window, lets in the wet night air,
it's hard to describe the view
out over the tree-line, cut by the walls

it's difficult to inscribe a window
onto a wall and open it,
in the distance

and the world exists in rooms we pass through,
or carry with us, walls,
the streets clogged with hallways and the

occasional creak of a door, a

whisper of a scent from elsewhere, but
windows are rare,

rooms rushing past each other, in flight
at haste

the lightning shatters across the basin,
flashes across the walls,

the glass thuds against the frame,
and shudders,

below the inky hills, the wind eddies
and the stars gleam
heedless and scattered, above the road

headlights blazing, somewhere, in the dark
higher across the slope

of those who came back--most did not remember
and some could not describe--
what they had seen before