Carl Newlen

This Far In the Desert

- July 10, 2009, 3:26 pm | Sum Poems

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This far in the desert
bees find water, and Donald
finds a hole-in-the-head
dead man, gang-land naked
and baking three days under
the white Mohave sun.

Bum on government land, squatting
fourteen years and counting, he paints,
sings western songs, plays a three string
guitar, days thinking about days
and jack rabbits that feed here at dusk.

Then he lies belly-down on the floor
of his gutted old Ford and waits
for Mother Venus to come rubbing
her stone cool breasts all over his back
until he sleeps.

Bum squatter and lonely man,
he was a boy in Vermont
when he found his oatmeal breakfast
boiling over on the stove,
and his father in the basement
hanging from a pipe.

Bum squatter, dead man finder,
then the visions came --
Mother Venus floating
down to him on her saucer.

In Vermont
he says he could kneel on one knee,
press his finger in the dark brown mud,
and if he said so, a tree would be.

He does not claim to be the Messiah.

Bum squatter and artist,
Donald cuts hair from his head,
tapes it to a stick, begins painting
the shadows of her secret neck.

Beneath the light of a Palo Verde
her hair is unkempt, blown around
her face by a secular wind.

Her skin is the color of Arizona
moonlight on skin, her nose
is small over terse lips. She is
wrapped for winter.

Her eyes are wet as she leaves
for the mountains, carrying
what she owns, camps on needles
under pines and eats what she finds.

This far in the desert
Donald is finding dead men,
The bees find water,
and she looks like love.

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