Three people come where no people belong any more. They are a woman who would be young And good-looking if these now seemed Real qualities, a child with yellow hair, a man Hardened in desperate humanity. But here are only Dry cistern, adobe flaking, a lizard. And now this Disagreeable feeling that they were summoned. Sun On the corrugated roof is a horse treading, A horse with wide wings and heavy hoofs. The lizard Is splayed head down on the wall, pulsing. They do not Bother to lift their binoculars to the shimmering distance. From this dead center the desert spirals away, Traveling outward and inward, pulsing. Summoned From half across the world, from snow and rock, From chaos, they arrived a moment ago, they thought, In perfect fortuity. There is a presence emerging here in Sun dance and clicking metal, where the lizard blinks With eyes whetted for extinction; then swirling Outward again, outward and upward through the sky's White-hot funnel. Again and again among the dry Wailing voices of displaced Yankee ghosts This ranch is abandoned to terror and the sublime. The man turns to the woman and child. He has never Said what he meant. They give him The steady cool mercy of their unreproachful eyes. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IMAGINARY ANCESTORS: THE GIRAFFE WOMAN OF BURMA by MADELINE DEFREES THE MEASURE OF THE YEAR by JAMES GALVIN BROTHERHOOD by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON INTERRACIAL by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON VENUS IN A GARDEN by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON VOICES OF THE AIR by KATHERINE MANSFIELD CHARLES CARVILLE'S EYES by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON |