DESERT MOON
Gibbous moon over Sea of Cortez,
now black in the night.
I wake to sounds of whales surfacing
in the calm bay, stirred
from dreams of catching the dorado,
only to watch the dimming of the impossible colors:
indigo, mustard, viridian, crimson.
And I, haunted by my selfish guilt,
wishing to undo it
and give the fish back to the sea,
ask to what end do we betray the earth
if not through the armistice of death?
What of that difference
between lion and lamb?
We are not saints,
these last wild places
disappearing.
Desert wind twists through dry arroyo
and pires of cardon, dust-green saguaro cactus.
A gull, yet to roost, weeps from the sand.
c. 2014 B. L. Bruce, excerpt from “The Weight of Snow”
Bri Bruce Productions 