By Jeri Lewis Edwards
How could you have known we would
become utterly, inexplicably lost
without that misplaced map?
And that razor cut trail cloaked in dust,
talus, edged felsite, gneissic-banded rubble.
We witnessed those tumbled stones—
they weren’t cairns from your past,
no markers to guide us.
We couldn’t help but notice your narrow game
swaths, up boulder jutted cliffs—too exposed.
We witnessed attempts on your ghost treks,
your offshoots to nowhere—none of them
had tread before us.
We risked your insignificant
drainages as catclaw groped our clothes,
tore our flesh, while burrs jumbled our socks,
and your gnats made relief
maps of our scalps.
We walked reverently through a heavily
populated rattlesnake den, witnessed
them coiled on your car-sized ledges,
countless restful in the darkened hollows,
sizable ones slithered from us through your
grassy corridor.
We searched for your hidden springs
as if they were our unclaimed inheritance.
You heard our arguments over
which coordinate to take—we
had tried them all it seemed—yet, not once
did we give up on you, your granite
hardened silence, and we were, we confessed,
consumed by all this severe beauty...
But, oh, that one solitary Gila Monster we
saw in the dry wash, its chunky body painted
like ancient pottery, its lumbering legs, determined
singularities...Somehow it emboldened us in
its direction, down your unbidden contour,
down your dry falls,
your entangled detritus,
your decayed deadfall,
down your free fall drop-offs,
down
down
down
to where, finally, we found our way.
Editor's notes:
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