Photo by John Nakata on Adobe Stock
Fireweed in Autumn
A sentinel for three seasons,
The fireweed stands unsteady
In the freshening breeze.
A phoenix of the scorched earth,
Its seeds break out in gossamer clouds,
Seeking newly ravaged lands to restore.
What flowers remain from
Their long journey up the stem,
Pause, as if in silent reflection.
Do the petals recall –
The rush of spring?
The storms of summer?
Like old men nodding in the sun,
Do they bask in remembrance, or
Fear the coming clutch of winter.
Night Air
The pines are half-asleep,
Nodding off in the late afternoon sun.
Dusk creeps along the lower ridges
Sneaking into every ditch and gully.
As the shadows ascend the ridges,
The slack mountain air begins to stir,
Ready to return to the valley floor
Where it spent the previous night.
The morning sun propelled it
Up the slopes, and held it all day.
Now the sun has lost its grip,
And the air begins its gentle,
But inexorable, descent.
As the trees slumber the coyotes arise
To the opportunities of darkness.
In a lone pine on a windswept ridge
The owl’s eyes come into focus.
It spreads its wings and soars.
Night arrives in a feathered whisper.
High Desert Nightfall
The knife edge shadows cast by the brilliant western sky
recede into the recesses of the low benches and ridges.
Sage and bitterbrush merge into a tapestry of shadows,
as the rose hued shards of sunset fade behind the horizon.
The hills darken from luminous periwinkle to indigo and gray,
and night slowly advances over the high desert basin.
From the pinion-juniper woodland covering the upper ridges
a coyote yips in anticipation of the rising hunter’s moon.
His call is answered by a cacophony of high-pitched yips and yelps
from adjacent ridges and the now dark valley floor below.
In the deep recess of the valley a single, forlorn light, marks
the melancholy presence of man’s tenuous intrusion.