Passing through wintered reeds
And frost blanched salt grass,
We rose up once more
Onto sunflower benchland
Before dallying southward
Down the promontory.

Years flew steadily backward
With each narrow rolling mile
Of overgrazed ochre and dun;
Serpentine ridges wove
Westward, rising skyward into
Wintery mist, then snow.

Farmstead after farmstead,
Siberian Elm and poplar,
Rusted implements, tarpaper,
Cedar posts, barbed wire, and
Ever in sight that eastward
Shoreline sprawl of salt flat.

This would not be home
Were it not for the precipice face
Of the snow covered Wasatch:
Its familiarity distant, miniature,
Surrealistic, like this barren
Encompassing lake side bleakness.

Twenty-first Century becomes
A phrase, a manmade notch;
The year no more than a ring
On a twisty stunted hackberry;
January only deeper frost and
A welcome lengthening of light.

Time here is sunlight and season;
Reality, salt water, shore mud and grass;
Truth, the rusting of fence lines,
Fading rectangles of dry farm,
Pavement grinding down to gravel,
And new peers minding the land.

01/15/2007

Author's Note: On a reprieve from winter that the Old Ones knew not far from the Golden Spike.

Posted on 01/16/2007
Copyright © 2025 Leonard M Hawkes