ornate warble of meadowlarks
           burbling in melodic veronicas,
ribboning the spires, buttes, pinnacles,
           and gullies of sedimentary stone,
sage and sweet grass smudging the still-cool air

lush-bellied manatees of clouds somersault
           above an inching infestation—
cars, trailers, trucks, busses, airstreams—
           glittering carapaces twisting
their stranglehold around Yellow Mounds

                                 *

late spring baby goats
           nestle in to Pinnacles, at dusk,
a scatter of heartbeats, furred
           commas, blending clauses
to sun warmed sandstone

a big horn sheep blinks
           into my lens from between
his horns’ apostrophes—
           slit pupils iconic and slow
as gold cat’s-eye marbles

                                 *

shadow-hollowed, wind-ruffled
           stone’s mimetic shape-shifting
all metaphor and simile:
           like stiff-beaten cake batter
like striated molten glass

here, a disconsolate woman weeps
           behind spidery fingers
here, a sleepy elephant rests
           its trunk upon the ground
here, cubist lovers’ stilled in a flash-frozen kiss

                                 *

some say moonscape, or otherworldy,
           as if to mean something alien,
sandwiched between the banality
           of kitschy Sinclair station dinosaurs
and Wall Drug’s ubiquitous billboards

I think not moonscape but earthscape,
           not otherworldly, but innerworldy,
not alien, but indigenous, as in
           always already from and of
as in sovereign, as in not ours

                                 *

unexpected wingbeat, talon, and spray
           of gold flint-sparking the light
when one of the golden eagles surfing currents
           near Sharps Formation by Castle Trail
plummets to swoop in front of my Jeep

its sharp-eyed, curious gaze catches me gawking
           through the windshield, and suddenly
I’m no longer the voyeur, but the spied upon,
           and before it kites skyward again
I am, in those seconds, all spotlit halo, golden blaze

                                 *

a cottontail backlit by sunset,
           thin-membraned ears glowing
with the hot orange of tea-light’s flicker
           behind glass, has its picture taken
by a happy group of Chinese tourists

for a brief moment, the cottontail
           is simultaneously framed within
the bright rectangles of five iPhones, all lit up
           within the bright rectangle of my iPhone:
molten-eared bunnies within bunnies / #meta

                                 *

how infinitesimal our millenia
           how tightly folded
our lives’ tiny accordions within
           the time-lapsed tidal flux
of geological deposition and erosion

someone breaks a pottery bowl in slow motion:
           can you imagine the apocalyptic scatter
of ammonites and clams, the beautiful wreckage
           of an ocean’s millennial spill
from a mountain-cracked basin of broken raku?

Lee Ann Roripaugh