Pilgrimage in the Desert

 
How many questions in the spring
after Lent food—lentils and fish tacos—
how do we find a destiny
at least a destination
perhaps in the stony Franklin mountains:
has the trail to Cottonwood Springs
been disarranged by a flood,
and do robbers spin a trap for us
en la Sierra del Cristo Rey
like black widow spiders in the corner?
We know they are out for us,
so will we leave our rings at home?

What happened in the Black Range
in the Gila Wilderness
is a state secret.
Do we dare ask the black crickets
whose chorus swells in the blasted pines?

How are the red rocks of Marfa
the coolest spot in Texas,
the lowest lows in summer,
with the lights no one can explain,
neither poet nor scientist?

Forest fire in the Davis Mountains,
where the feral hog burrows and deer
leap over fences however tall
where do you live now
that you have consumed yourself?

In dark sky territory, the McDonald Observatory
where the mythology goes in the thin air
observing the catalogue of stars, can we
make out what we can’t see in the city?

 

 

Robin Scofield, author of Flow (Street of Trees Projects), winner of the Southwest Book Award, from the Border Library Regional Association, has poems appearing in West Texas Literary Review, Phantom Drift, and The Ocotillo Review. She writes with the Tumblewords Project in El Paso and attends the San Miguel Poetry Week.