Bleached out moon in blue sky
high noon possesses the zen of a snowflake.
The river is a chain that links the lost spaces in
the desert between stars. The stars

are like the remains of any anonymous poet’s
bones that suddenly wash up on shore
somewhere in Mexico. In Palo Duro Canyon
ghost Kiowa follow a Cooper’s hawk to a

dry stinking spring. At the museum,
Shakespeare’s first folio is on display and open
to a page from Hamlet: unpack my heart with words.
It’s Valentine’s Day Sunday, the world is trying

its best to love me. Unpack these words and
underneath in the circumspect late light of day, the
lissome river gathers up the heartbreak, the beauty,
its altar boys, spider’s webs, snake rattles, politicians’

barbaric kitsch, the face of Buddha and deposits them
on some far shore of my mind where there is still
elasticity and order, no war.
A dusky peace settles over the land

just as the river defuses its long, hot summer and
flows slow on the earth into autumn.

– John Macker