Beauty
There is nowhere to hide
in the desert, under the full moon,
in the blue light that pours
through the body like water.
It as if we are born again
in the open air, to feel our bare
skin against the world for the first time.
And from here, eyes untethered,
we see a different kind of beauty
that lives underneath the surface—
that quivers in the thorns
and breaks out of the volcanic rock
like a song you hear in a dream,
when your mind has gone quiet.
To meet this kind of beauty,
make a slow approach,
a spiral walk to the center.
Leave offerings. Show up
in the odd hours of the night—
then she may let you see her fur,
her sharp teeth, the flash
of her pale underbelly.
For this beauty moves in the spaces—
in the interior of things, in the rivulets
of a dry land that rarely sees rain,
in the seed that blooms once in a hundred years,
in the sap of a Joshua tree lifting
its arms, heavy with blooms, to the piercing stars.
This beauty leaves you weeping
in the blue of the moonlight
with nowhere to hide.