Sego

I finally have posted my next poem. Long wait. About the ghost town of Sego in the Book Cliffs.

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Bones of old coal-surveyors
buried somewhere--everywhere--
under deer-trampled sage
and rickety leaning piles of roof timbers
eroding thin like coffin lids.
These are perched
over fallen tin and concrete foundation,
the rumpled stuff of hollowed financial dreams.

Sandstone brick stacked and crumbling,
a soaring facade
slowly removing itself
deep into morning's light.
The bank saferoom bored underground
once black and secret, now
scorched and sun-opened.

Cottonwood leaves
rustle the night a convincing waterfall echo--
though the wetsand trickle in the wash
indicates otherwise.
These burnt-orange frames of hundred-year
cars mind the weather well, rust in place here
against wind, snow, bullets.

Long before we struggled around this way
these cars made it up here.
Everything makes it here eventually,
wind through the ghosted desert.




..................[the southwest]

 - New Mexico in October

 - Sego