The Wright Stuff

by Art Goodtimes

Love it or leave it
the Rednecks say
& I'm all roots & getting redder
here at Cloud Acre
looking south to Lone Cone.

Willow buds thick
in the highway barrow ditch.
Late spring asparagus
& bottle blue iris.

Each night
listening for the arpeggio
whistle of tailfeathers
as the Wilson Snipes
do their loop-to-loop

keeping us mosquito free
amid the irrigated
wetlands of Maverick Draw.

In my own kept fields
a volunteer orchard of summer
sour cherry
& 50 fall varieties of
heirloom seed potatoes.
Desiree. Ozette. Rose Finn Apple.

Winters it's Sirius
snapping at Orion's heel
on a rip across the milky night sky.

What better place to call
home
than this high desert cloud mesa
high five rippling of the continental
plates before they slap down
fanning towards the coast?

Let others take the plains
The Great Basin.
The indolent urban grids
where most our specie
thrives.

Give me raw Rock.
Mountains. Impossible cliffs.
Cedar. Piņon. Sage
& the silvery blue Juniper.

Give me vistas
free of rooflines.
Whole counties
without stoplights.

Give me Sun
in the window.
Water in the pond.

What works for the Wolf
works for me.

Food in the winter.
Range to roam in
& miles & miles of
the more-than-human
always wild.

photo credit: Christine A.B. Odle