Lyrics

Desert Landscape 1.0

I look up at the slanting mesa rise
before the vivid blue-bright cobalt skies.

A pale blend of greens and beige and white
in washed-out contrast, brilliant blinding light.
Monsoons of summer fade to droughts of fall
and I have luck to gaze upon it all.

The spiking grasses in a broad expanse,
the antelope and ravens in their dance;
I find my composition ready-made-
I wait until the coming of the shade.

Now shadows from the clouds progress in waves
across the parapets that stand like graves,
carved by wind in canyons brown and pink-
my life in geologic time, a blink.

I take a moment down a pebble slide
finding where the angles coincide.
I set the easel, colors in my hand,
and paint with pigment made from desert sand.

Desert Landscape 2.0

I look up
at the slanting mesa
rise under a blue-bright dome-
a pale blend of
green-beige-white,
in washed-out contrast,
blinding light.

Monsoons of summer
quickly fade and presage early
droughts of fall.
It is mine
in this
small time;
I gaze upon it all.

Harsh razor grasses, desert sage,
punctuate the broad expanse
and frame a stage upon which dance
ravens in their arcing flight;
a composition shows itself.
I wait. I wait.

Revealing shapes in stark relief,
shadows under clouds progress
in waves across the parapets
that stand like graves
in light and shade
in timeless time.

I scramble
down
a pebbled slide
and analyze the scene ahead,
evaluating how and where
lines and angles
coincide.

Above the canyons
carved by seas
and scoured by sand
in endless winds,
morphing purple indigoes
glide across pink castle walls,
then race across the desert floor.

The palette balanced in my hand,
I paint with pigment
made from sand.
In geologic time I am
a blink a wink and nothing more.