-another poem rough
Mojave

I walk in the middle
of a bare, salt plain,
the soft crust breaking
beneath my weight.

The white stretches all the way
to the base of mountains,
a wall
like a dark sky themselves.

The metal of far gantries
and bunkers stops glinting,
subsumed subtly
by a dimmer light.

By the time I step back
from the foreboding shadow
I'm already in it, so I stop
and tilt my gaze

to the storm building over
Olympian peaks,
like another earth itself.
Something rumbles within, alive.

The dark stone
in its epic proportions bows
before the weight of dark,
heavy vapor; and I kneel.

I feel small,
a speck on a dry frozen sea
of dust, staring up
at the ephemeral that is greater than mountains.

This parched earth will no longer crack
for want of moisture,
but drown
beneath the ocean of airy water above.

I measure the distance back
while wind cools the sweat
trickling down my spine, and thunder booms.
I stand, and run.