October, Remembering the Ride No One Saw

Steel horses nodding In the petroleum field are beasts That suck The crude of earth. They have lived here for as long as I Remember. This moment, I smell wild incense: Heather, abducted by a desert wind. Its growth hides The rain-carved ribs of the foothills. Evening swallows The city fasting on late fall. Years ago, after hearing the story About a boy who lost Both legs while playing on an oil pump, I was dared to straddle one. All my friends were there to watch The Pacific behind me burning with dusk. The brute lifted me to the sky, Where I merged with the twilight, A warm breeze embracing my back. None of them noticed The world stopped to breathe. When I looked, they disappeared. Nearby in pink-flowered bushes Someone found The girl who’d been missing for weeks. They stood in awe, the body Decomposing, while I rode The slow bucking animal. Two months later, off the same pump, A man dove, An imperfect swan into night. He landed in the dirt gully Breaking the soft, white wings He never had. Today, I catch in my hand An insect charged with lightning. It tickles The obscure scoop of my palm As I hold it to my mouth and explain A wish so simple By morning I will have forgotten it. I release The bug to a desert wind That is racing toward the sea, A brutal dryness in its wake. Fire in the hills everywhere.