David Chorlton

Ahwatukee Fog

There’s a thick coyote fog today,
here doesn’t look like here;
misty hummingbirds and ghost slopes
on the mountain. 
No sound where the street was
and a chill come down
from the stars overnight.
It’s grey as thought
                             with a red coat
moving at the pace of an octogenarian
who holds her husband’s hand. It’s once
around the cul-de-sac and back
into the mystery along
the small part
                    of the larger world
they belong to. It’s like magic,
this passing through a wall
of silence to go
where the daily news will never find them.

Today’s Desert

Morning over the mountain. Birdsong
pours out of the moon
as it rolls away into the light.
It’s eight am,
                   it’s noon,
the ridgeline sharpens into afternoon
and every cactus needle glows.
A few desert steps
                          into the range
of a Cactus Wren calling.
Clouds underfoot, stones
in the sky, the scent
of a shower to come mingles
with the scent
                    of the last one
to fall where the trail angles through
an arroyo and all
                         who pass
here stop to look back
at where they have come from.
Two pm,
             twenty twenty-three,
rain in a foreign language, nineteen
seventy-eight,
                     the sun shines down
in translation.

Hawk on New Year’s Eve

A Red-tailed Hawk has flown to year’s end
where she watches the mountain crumble.
There’s rain on the way,
                                  she can feel it,
and after it has fallen
the sun will break out of the Earth. 
She has an eye so sharp
                                  it sees through time.
No hours, no days, no memory
to weigh her down when she’s floating.
She’s woven a nest around sunlight,
uses air free of charge
                               and moves under cover
of silence to endings and beginnings and
the breaths in between.
                                  Midnight
doesn’t mean good news has taken wing.
It’s neutral. It says the loss
of what is known
                         is weighed against
the mystery of all
that lies ahead. And the hawk
when she’s perched on the minute hand
as it reaches number twelve
dreams of dawns
                        she can snag
with a claw and chew down to the bone.        

 

David Chorlton lives near the large desert mountain park in Phoenix. He takes walks there during the cooler months when he can step outside the urban setting and find the company of saguaros, rocks and the bees who make their honeycombs in an arroyo bank hollow. Back at home he writes and reflects that Phoenix is more than strip malls and overnight shootings.