Beneath Western Sands

Lots of things

Are buried here

In the salty absence

In the drowning heat.

The Native Children

Hiding in the cracks

Between the eras

The devils in their dens

Below the crackled crust

The hoof beats

Of the long dead stampedes

Beneath the dry soles

Of the 20th century...

The remnants of the sea

Are buried here

The shattered bits

Of the giant saltwater snail’s shell

Along with the beak of Davy Jones’

leviathan

Poseidon’s scepter

Laid below

The fossilized footprints

Of giants and Pharaohs...

The remnants of freedom

Are buried here

Well-traveled charred hardwood bits

Hidden at the foot of a taproot

A lonely spur

And a severed bootstrap

In the shade

Of the red rocks

The sun-bleached hide

And the horseshoe

By the dry river bed

The hardened wagon trenches

Along the canyon

The Aztec gold

In the Cavern

The medicine wheel

Prominently left alone

To the 6 portals of heaven...

The remnants of love

Are buried here

With rattlesnake bone

And Clovis point

A shovel

A tattered dress

A revolver

And last words whispered

That echo softly still

Through the walls

Of the towering Mesas...

Lots of things

Are buried here.

Three worlds before our own.

The rise and fall of civilization.

The genocide of the children of Atlantis.

The death of frontier hope

Under the boots of Henry Ford.

The gold fever broke

Before the eyes of J.P. Morgan.

The unachieved dreams

Of the American Revolution.

All of them

Preserved perfectly here

In a land

That knows no time

Humming gently beneath

A crystal blanket

Beating and pulsing

With the drums

Of the Anasazi

Waiting for something

That nobody knows

In a silence

So perfect

You can hear it.