Two Poems by Merridawn Duckler

Between the pueblo and the faux-eblo
the forest of spectacular mesa flies alongside
the route marked by my dust.

The odd spindly red chimney,
beggared for a few thousand millennia
ringed with semi-precious fallen leaves

under the abandoned white bride of trees,
yellow like loneliness,
the color of a wolf-eye yearning to be caught.

Here roadside altars await their accident
closed shops are marked open and there is a walking rain
but it is walking away from us all.

I might be one of the dead
except the dead can only startle, not surprise, us
like this deep shawl tossed purple sky

I describe in all the richest swearwords,
ever a pueblo dog that howls with no embarrassment,
willing to tear to pieces for the love of all that stands guard.