Nevada Novena
I stood on the salt flat
and looked at the bones, the
vague contours of erosion:
the scorpion close,
the faraway mountains.
A truck, like a prophet, roared
out of the wilderness, its red
paint clashing with the pallor
of the afternoon. Religion
is dead
until it rips out of you. (Look,
something speeds toward the space
jutting now between cloud-shelf
and horizon! Something
makes waves out of heat!)
To own the day.
To own the desert, sky, past and
future, and to have this done to you . . .