by William Doreski
Wafting across the desert,
a voice as smooth as a planet.
Its fine texture reminds me
of your skin perfectly unstressed.
You don’t hear it because wind
too dry to inhale has snuffed
your finer senses, labeled you
too human to appreciate
the reckless souls of minerals.
That voice is their accumulation,
ground into sand and whispered
across ten thousand square miles
of the most exquisite dark.
Our motel room fits like a suit
of armor. I must step outside
to shed my shirt of particulars
and prepare for sleep. You laze
with a magazine, lofting pages
into an imaginary blue.
Do you sense the words behind
the printed words? Those infuse
the mineral voice roaming
the earth with dainty appetite,
eroding, etching, engraving
every surface, including us,
with a glib apparent dissonance.
If we could dilate enough
to encompass the whole desert,
cupped in mountain ranges,
we could read that rhetoric
and renew with intonations
something greater than the self.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His forthcoming book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
Hyades Magazine 