Again, the hollow night is knocking against <br />My fiery eyes: This sun does strange things to the earth, <br />As it sinks- No one escapes the depths of the night, <br />After all the sun is just a sliver of glass in the west <br />Cutting between the pine bows and my tired though insouciant wings- <br /> <br />The dogs are with me as we begin to sink in unison. <br />The little one howls, the big one yawns, and I ask them <br />If they can smell her in the distant perfume over the lazy hills: <br />Her eyes, her eyes like moonlight in a dream’s pool <br />When nothing exists in the mirror but art, <br />And I cannot really say who she is, but my primary sadness, <br />The constant of the dirge, and the well which maintains <br />Words in me- <br /> <br />When night is fallen and she is asleep, or as the day is yawning <br />The drooling dawn, and I am asleep in an Arizona lullaby of <br />Hooves crunching in the last of winter’s crinoline, <br />With my ancestors up on the hill swaying not a lick, <br />Remaining the constant puzzles of the livings furtive pulse; <br />I search for her in the cool valley, in the lines of shadows <br />Beneath the quiet cliffs, and only the footsteps speak before <br />The fiery motes awakenings, and when I stop to listen <br />If she is my predator or my prey, <br />Then there is not another sound at all <br />But for the knelling of the day, <br /> <br />And the postures of arrowheads like fiery directions which <br />Once tasted the hunted ribs, <br />And if one should slide into her like a growing pain in <br />The middle of an exam, then my eyes should linger upon the <br />Eastern plains and tear, because I imagine all I am <br />Is but her untouchable wound.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/arizona-lullaby/
