Little black heap, by the side of the road
You're gone in but a moment
Swept away like a paper bag in the wind
By a car doing 85 down a desert highway.
Still regal in death, a cloaked black form,
Broken and bloodied, shimmering,
Left in the desert sands for the lizards
And hawks and ants to have their turn.
Cars continue driving past.
The desert is nothing to them but a gulf,
A sea to be crossed, an odyssey,
As are you. Temporary.
Did you know all of this used to be the sea?
Worn down by millions of years
of waves, detritus, death, and decay,
birthed anew in the ocean's foam,
only to cycle through once more.
No sane man makes a home atop the waves
Yet you and I, we exist between them
In the land of sunbleached billboards,
Home of walled off "Valley Grocery" stores
Domain of the damned, of Adolfo's Hardware
and Adolfo's Fashions, binary stars
long since coalesced into one black hole
not heavy, simply empty, in silent towns
with more roofs caved in than still standing,
lone cowboys watch vigil over inns
no longer vertical, just,
gone, beneath the sea of sand and sky.
You and I, we live in a land of corpses.
What's one more?
Rest in peace.