Poem-a-Day

Sand-gray desert siren, a roadrunner  
             froze between creosote, confused 

                          not by prickly pear or pencil cactus,  
                                       but by fumes choking the road’s throat.

A toddler nearby tensed at each  
             tire’s shriek, his hand crushed inside

                          his mother’s as the roadrunner  
                                       swiveled its head as if looking for his

before darting west, then north,  
             then west again, this time    

                          toward a canyon whose creek,   
                                       after a meagre snowmelt, 

was ringed by thin reeds, skeeters  
             careening between them. Don’t, 

                          my mother had warned when I crawled 
                                       from beneath mesquite, 

lizard’s tail dangling from my fist.  
             When she tried to stop    
            
                          bulldozers from collapsing bighorn  
                                       habitat, I ignored her, grabbing

whiptails, dung beetles, centipedes.  
             Now the toddler,

                          eyeing flecks of fool’s gold glowing  
                                       in a chunk of sandstone          

slips free of his mother’s hand 
             to flop in the dirt beside the highway. 

                          Can he feel dunes breathing  
                                       beneath his feet, aquifer dwindling

but still rich as his own blood running?—  
             Or does he hear only the groans

                          of a desert emptying, ravens massed  
                                       in the valley to scavenge.