This Was The Old Man's Home

The old man

with the sunburned head

lived on the bald mountain top

away from the people,

away from the fishnets of fiber optic wire

stretched above the cracker box houses

and away from their rivers of cars -

watersheds of cars.

He was not like them.

The old man was an artist.

He had worked in blind erotica.

He painted the backs of the tortoise

beached on the tops of the clouds.

He dipped the bats from the mountain's cave

in poster paint and set them at the unsteady gait

of the nightbug's dervish

under the evening lantern.

Canvases of arroyo bank clay 

holding in its fossil bed arms

the red of the angry red sunset sun.

Kiln fired pots of saguaro shadow brown

glazed with sand from the wash 

where the white wolf siestas in the tall grass.

Garnet clusters of bleached rock are

the riverbed's jewelry.  

This was the old man's home.

Where the eye of the sun 

holds the land and its passengers

square in its stare.

Where the old man can 

see the breath of the stars

holding up the night's blanket

when the sun falls asleep.

This was the old man's home.