US Highway 93
Kingman, Arizona, to Hoover Dam
Like every other desert highway,
miles of drab brown,
low to the ground scrub,
living dormant under
perfectly peaceful blue skies.
Something fearful dwells in deserts
so pervasive it weighs heavy in the heart.
It can be smelled in the creosote and sage,
in the rocks and dirt like death’s warning.
It is stern and treacherous,
yet a few invite themselves in,
daring to live an austere,
precarious existence.
It has cast a spell
on the few squatters
dotting the landscape,
living in fragile travel trailers
or dwellings of found materials.
They couldn’t resist the lure
of the land’s breathtaking solitude,
the mad done in by rejection,
heretical outcasts hoping to silence
the clamor of worldly things
and their own inner turmoil.
Some may be irreparably broken.
Whatever is held dear,
it’s a seductive and formidable wilderness,
where anyone can get lost in its time and place.
From: Memories Of Things Left Behind
Unpub. MS p. 38
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