Enough

by Pepper Trail
 
The mountain is a mountain of stone
The valley is a valley of dust
 
The mantra in my head, making the drive
from Summer Lake to Wagontire, winding around
the hogback buttes on Lake County Road 2-06
before dropping down to the wide salt skirts of Lake Abert,
car juddering on the washboard, forever fleeing its white shadow
of dust, which catches us at every stop, wraps us, chokes us.
 
But on that mountain grow fat leaves of stonecrop,
seeming to wring water from the very stones, and in the dust a flower
called Dusty Maidens, disheveled heads powdery, but beneath,
a modest loveliness.  And in the sky a nighthawk, so high it is invisible,
but its nasal summoning cry ringing that blue and borderless bell, while
from the horizon-filling sagebrush the songs of meadowlarks rise in celebration
of  all that stone and dust provide.