I only wanted high points,
epiphany when eyes meet
and spark, flash of electric-blue
wings of a morpho, not dirty
gray shadows thronging the road,
beneath vultures screeching
from trees, not a land of explosions,
nor twentieth-century strangeness
sink-holing the twenty-first’s
restless sands of reality.

Touch here, and I give way
to elsewhere, to the slick path
along the rim of a desert water
hole, stagnant pool below
lost-in fog, so only the sleek
wooden circles, stepping stones
cut from tree hearts, reveal
their forms, and I reach
for your hand to steady my way
in this slippery silence.