IN A PLACE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN

IN A PLACE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN

What might come
from a washed out road
without a sign in a place
you've never been.

We were rolling downward,
the buttes were spiraling upward
like tipped over dairy queen cones
heads squashed along a serpentine road.

Near a cemetery sign, I turned onto a clay track,
driving a four cylinder Toyota
fording a muddy wash
as anvil clouds intimidated a spotted sky.

We arrived and paused at a village not on any map
inhabited by a herd of unkempt sheep
grazing on tumbleweeds
trapped and quivering
with the trembling mesquite.

From a tunnel dug under the pan fried land
a tarantula ambushed a lizard
feasting on a wasp by a bone dry reef
where a scorpion lurked like a lobster
out to assassinate that tarantula.

Free at last
of its pane
a torn curtain blew
out of a jagged window
a tattered flag
in an empty surrender.

Then I heard dirt bikes
rumbling echoes
off the walls
of a no name arroyo
before noticing a stray bull
stoned on aloe juice
attempting to mount
a sideways outhouse.

I recognized this place
from a popular western
an outlaw hideout
a pioneer's stake
a shepherd's homestead
a rustler's roost.

It was a blockbuster
big stars playing lawmen and the lawless
there were posses and shootouts
and a hero riding into the sunset.

How did those matinee idols find this spot,
down wind and a days ride east
of the man dammed canyons
and the nuclear wasted craters
on the antelope range
of the yucca flats?

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS April 2010