The native return

small parts of a long poem under construction


What would the desert offer an old absentee
other than cactus, lizard tails and sunburn

He who knows the call of the fang, the chrip
of the eagle. He who knows the vastness of the land
like the end of a palm, knows that dust upon dust
gathers only decomposition
some old, some new, some flesh and plant
but all the wind that whistles again and again
like memory


the native returns to chopped out woods
to half completions
he returns
homeward