October 18, 2013

Dawn Moon, old ivory, glowing, cupped between the Rincon and Mt. Lemmon.

The first Barn Swallow in three weeks wings in, does not linger, is gone–and so with it are they all. It leaves behind a Great Blue Heron motionless in The Stockpond. Avian migrants on the way South, human migrants on the way North, viajeros on these multi-level highways running North and South piercing that bubble-fiction called “The Borderline”. Creatures move. It’s what we do.

Deep, dry borders of the recently arrived “African Grass” (Enneapogon) shine silver and white as late sun passes through them, beyond the River’s edge fence where the cattle can’t reach, and before a backdrop of light and dark green Cottonwoods. On every steep hill and high mesa to the West of that gallery forest of alamos, the Ocotillo have already dropped their leaves that had given their own brief but subtly exquisite fall foliage show of yellow and orange. Autumnal shadows of Creosote Bush streak long down those slopes, and drip over edges into darkening arroyos.

Full Moon, new ivory, a crown atop a rounded peak, rises into that deep blue penumbra cast by Earth out into fathomless Space. Above Moon, all the sky is pink, and as She is almost let free by mountain crown of Muleshoe wilderness, Moon seems held aloft by some priest or holy woman, a Eucharist coming to be made sanctified. Moon hovers just above the mountain, in ancient symbol, Egyptian, Hohokam, Japanese. The Creosote Bush glow.