The death of a moon cowboy

I am a somewhat-youth with ideas and thoughts and too many dreams that sometimes overflow as these little dribblings from my fingertips. I guess you can try to collect and capture them.


Monday, June 06, 2011

Sego

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

--- ---

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.

rusted car


..................[the southwest]
 - Sego

2 comments:

moonshinejunkyard said...

oh matt i love this. i love how you have pictured it a financial wasteland, with the bones of old material goods, cars, and the busted barren safe exposed. so beautiful and thoughtful and urgent; i am pleased to have wandered those lands with you and want to do a LOT more wandering.

Amy Beatty said...

Wow! Surprise surprise pretty surprise. Love it all the rustling leaves indeed sound like running water. Oh blessed desert. You majestic sun scorchedness have blasted away and burrows deep into our souls, salty tears run down our pink cheeks. We are yours!!! Xo