Where the coyotes
follow her to the river
and then lose scent
to the days beyond

I’m working through some problems in the current draft of a poem in hypertext.  Of course, one problem is simply finding the time to write during the teaching semester, but time will come over the break for digging into the project.

The topology of one section of the work is an interesting quest to sort out relationships of color, distance, and texture across time and space.  The above stanza is a section of the poem that “crosses to” a great distance, a distance that wants to come to me as an image from my own experience with the desert.

North of Las Cruses, in southern New Mexico, I used to drive through a section of highway that cut through the mountains, to a spot where you could climb up and sit and watch the town’s and city lights appear.  The sky would rise and distances were suggested by blackness behind the lights, the stars, and the bulk of mountains and radio towers across the Rio Grande river in Mexico.   That distance relates to time and memory.  The link, hopefully, will sharpen the potential connections between imagined occurrences and the specific details that make them whole in relation to one another.

Such as the thought of coyotes hunting then losing the scent. But it’s not coyotes.  It’s a darkness in the distance.  It’s something lost and reimagined, found yet still, or potentially,  unfamiliar.

I can still feel the touch of that stone, the warmth of the night, the sweet smell of the near desert misted by the glare of the distant city lights.