Photo by Edgar Chaparro on Unsplash

Smoky Sunrise

Ten skies to Albuquerque,
ten more breaths and a new home,
new lungs to breathe, new stars shining,
and fragrant lint-strewn meadows
with dagger-ed branches to greet you,
ten more heartbeats and the desert
will open up her arms again.

Overhead a vulture floats on thermals,
drowning in cloudless skies, the sun-burnt land,
hopes these new come soldiers wander westward
following their iron paths to golden sands,
and leave the graveyard path to foxes
the deadly valleys for cranes to nestle
on their winter’s flight to warmer places.

The topaz glimmers off a smoky sunrise
grafting itself onto a silver vine
of trembling lights sprinkling the Sandias,
like Christmas snow to a child’s mind.