David Chorlton

Day’s End

Another famous sky
passed overhead today
and with a flourish
slipped behind the ridgeline
as one last mockingbird
dissolved into the darkness.
It had been
a day of hours walking
and minutes flying
from dawn to this
here and now moment
about to continue into
the unmapped terrain
ruled by the moon. Coyotes
begin their long descent into
the human world. The grasses
at its banks are whispering
to the pond
where turtles carry messages
under water to time
resting to be fresh
for a new day beginning.
The mountain comes to life
right now, and shivers
at its core. Such are
the mysteries of desert
winter. There goes
one more hummingbird
to drink the nectar
of the stars and take
the message that this was
a day to nail the cold wind
to the earth.

Watching Leonard Cohen with Myron

                        IM Myron Scott

We talk through Dance Me to the End
of Love about the old ideals
and I remember the Arizona
Woodpecker we saw together in Madera
Canyon before Everybody Knows
takes us back to politics and deals like the one
that sold out Oak Flat
where he led a walk one morning when
an ice wind swept the air clean
although we saw little more
than species as familiar
as Hallelujah has become, but In my Secret Life
speaks better for the evening’s mood.
The pizza is finished by Closing Time
with Oak Flat in the balance
where towhees still hold their ground,
inseparably paired.

 

David Chorlton came West from Europe in 1978. He never complains about the heat and does his best to think of it as atmosphere that goes with the birds and local wildlife.