I don’t have the feeling I have been here before but
I have been land before. Cactus spine,
my seeing eyes,
a craggy of rock, my ear.
To hear that melancholy wind blow
as a ship yet unseen. Oh water,
even you remember being here,
of being desert. You mourn and wail
when the clouds are low
wanting to excavate the fish bones
that lime the soil with pernicious hope
of another salty Gomorrah. Lines of nets
roam the shored banks of highway,
droning a lullaby of nothing and nothing then
shock-jumped into the metal end of mortality.
While travelling through Nevada
it is easy to forget my cactus spine,
my craggy rock, to be caught by the lighted lure,
to ignore the lyre of a ship still unseen.
I have been you before.
