Presence 76

cloud free day
I’m beaten
to the final bench

— David Jacobs


yellow flag
the dry season ends
in gentle rain

— Tony Williams


moonward our steady climb beyond the tree line

— Leven Fox


once we fished crawdads
brother with brother
but the decades trickled away—
tell me why creeks run dry
and brothers never speak

— Curt Pawlisch


because I know
he’s trying
to place me
I say strange things
to make it harder

— Annie Bachini


Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness

After lunch we walk the dog down the trailhead. Over the third rise the prairie opens up into an otherworldly landscape. A vast necropolis of hoodoos, comprised of layers of sandstone, shale, mudstone, and coal that were deposited 75 million years ago. Many say they resemble mushrooms or large, prehistoric trees. But, I believe, they are the abandoned game pieces of Navajo deities. These stone pinnacles—mere pebbles to the gods—used in a game of Tsidil by Tsohanoai, the sun god and Niltsi, the wind god. The sticks used in play now remnants of petrified wood strewn across the canyon floor.

                                             badlands
                                             a devil dancing
                                             in the dust

— Terri L. French