DRY CRIK Journal

The desk looks north – purple strays
trimmed pink at dawn, upcanyon
clouds stretch, touch, change shape

aloft over Rowell Meadow beyond
the silhouette of Redwood Mountain.
South wall solid, it cannot see down

canyon or out upon the farm ground
cut squarely by roads and dusty avenues
between orchards of orange trees –

it cannot see how the lights of all
the little tractor towns have grown
together to illuminate the night, but

it sees enough through paper stacked
from other worlds to hold this gaze and
pretend its limbs embrace the sky again.