Rank and damp the vapors, backstaggering

out the greenhouse door for stricter soils

I set out, to instruct my looser soul

in the postures of piety. Forty

desert days should scorch my concupiscent

senses to meekness, swerve devotion

from this fond flesh, this riveting

shambles, toward some legible heaven.

Death Valley

The basin's rim absorbs with its basalt

the predawn gray. Heartbroken have I hastened

to this heartbroken place, most humble earth

knuckled beneath the reach of water, hot

as hell and godforsaken. Knuckling I

kneel into the gravel and brace for day.

Sunrise in adagio, vastly pink

over the Hundred-Year Bloom, the sand waste

flush with primroses,

blown anemones,

verbena blaring in gold and purple,

scrolls of fiddleneck, a fallen sky

of golden aster

sticky aster

false

star

star lily

Bethlehem lily.

Even the joshua's spikes are spiffed

with lilies.

Fuzzed with pollen, fat bees

nuzzle the desert's unaccustomed

frillery, nectared legs slick and swagging.

Outlandish busybodies, so far

from their apiary comforts, they stroke

the orchid's perverse opulence and fidget

the gravel in clusters, the dewy ground

beaded in sticky, waggling gold.

With strange throats the cardinals gloat

over their luck what-cheer-cheer-cheer, their cheer

drooping in doppler retreat as they swoop

from me, ever from me further, red flight

into a Field of color. I am caught

red-handed—no, red-hearted in flagrant

delight. My knees confess it, unbending

up from the razor gravel all bloodied

with primroses.