Will Walker

What Remains

The desert silence
is punctuated by the scratchings
of a few dusty lizards,
the croak of a passing raven,
a few lines of rocks
arranged by the locals
just off the highway
to send a simple message:
proof of life, and its fondness
for alcohol after midnight.

That same arid absence
is an empty opening
to endless surprise,
an invitation
to levitate, to float gently
upward toward the stratosphere
and view this jeweled planet
from the undisturbed
stillness of the pockmarked moon.

Filled with constant regard
it faces earth unceasingly,
a worshipful satellite
never tiring of the little swirls
of tornadoes and hurricanes,
the sudden silent eruptions
of the largest volcanoes,
the delicate plumes of ash
extending featherlike
over the azure oceans,
shadowing the edges of continents
littered with fossils
and fresher bones.