Death Valley
Your Mother and I
Your mother and I
keep spaces between us.
We travel together
on separate schedules.
Our love is like a Roman
goddess. She’s elusive in Latin
and yet she endures.
One way we know our love
is how we miss you equally.
It comes in waves
like sphere after sphere
of the fragrance I fly through
on my silver chariot
racing for the full moon
on the silvery, sage-carpeted
California desert.
Your mother and I
will find no time tonight
to drink to her success in Hollywood.
And so I kneel down
in boots and helmet
and take some sand at sundown
and watch it slip through my fingers,
white and pure,
like time fleeting
with our daughter.
