It was after a storm, the clouds just lifting, when I noticed the soft half-light that held the hills, not a trace of wind, but the afternoon sky rose like vanishing smoke.
Then I noticed a line of wet rock rooted into the earth, at the edge of a shadow. Off west, clouds still hung onto the mountain, clung fast, and I couldn’t — burn was what I said then — that vision into language, with words that would flame yet smoulder — green juniper fire.
And still I think, if this last wisp of smoke drifts off, I might follow or just stay here in the desert, a place I knew before I knew my face — and later, at last lodged in bedrock — meant wonder and understood.
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