Who Outdrew You

I forced myself into the freezing blue-grey winter day, down the path that someone had determined only moderate. History had found it a suitable encampment. Away from people into the canyons where my heart beats it’s the truest home: bristlecones and their caramel pines. Lightning struck trees stark against the martian skined rocks. Sandy paths through rocky washes. The doe who stood so still at my hopping from boulder to rock. Her beau kept careful watch. Our eyes locked and I consented to his stone stare. My body needed movement and my mind silence.

Silence is hard to find even 14 miles into nowhere. Helicopters still scan the skies overhead protecting us from inclement weather and outdoorsy bravado. Stripped to a tank and goose flesh throbbing past frigid into numb is where the heart has enough room to burn. It has been ashes long enough, and some birds must take wing in flame.

The last time I came to this place it was when I found my spine needed straightening. Hard lines are difficult to draw when crossing them is part of the play. I disappeared into the page alone, and I choose a rain delay instead of calling the game — a mistake that this trip has forgiven.

In the stillness, the world shimmers its alternative fringe. Mirage is everything when thirsty and alone, the oasis of hope. Water is found in the cool earth through hard digging. Petition is the faithful who finds herself at the well of the unbeliever, humbled and grateful. Seeking the touchstones of the creator.

Life beats hard against my ribs. I who love the work, the players, the mess, the guts bleeding open and hot in my fingers. The red stained hands clutching the throbbing wet vitality. One must resort to cannibalism when art demands the flesh. Sugar skulled ideas that feed the gluttony of creation. It is into the wilderness where such feasts are found — the clay petrichor that only the greening desert can provide.

There the holy dove was moving too.