To cherish an inevitable broken-winged unkindness, blue-black

feathers, a murder’s infinite molt, frantic

                       trill of the piteousness, the scale-less trout writhing in
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the cindered river, the sated rattler dozing beneath the shrike-less juniper

understory while on one berryless upper fractal

                         a red-eyed cicada stutters through each stylet’s incision.
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On the crest of the ridge, beyond algae-ed pool of trapped rain, against

the Caja’s monsoon-gifted grama grass, two bucks

                        halt and step toward higher ground. Each pair of eyes
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trained on me and the black-tongued dog. Deer hides copper against verdigris

brilliance. Eye seeds betray a pair of doves

                         in the piñon. The killdeer and horned lark, jumping mouse
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and vole, unable now to shelter against this drought’s ochre, from killing talon of

kestrel, red-tail or owl. Under sky

                       without moon, myriad comet fragments fall toward earth.
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With them the vanished Beloved may return. Under sky without moon,

my heart, escape

                        the desert we carry.

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