The Great Dying

As I was biking down Guadalupe Peak
I came upon the shotgun of a boy
who used to headlight jackrabbits
on the airstrip in the Salt Flats below.

Down there he told me were ghosts
of buffalo soldiers, Apache, pilots
of crashed planes—they had no need
for proper boots and trekking poles—

and I would find protruding from fissures
and fractures of the desert a host
of bones and fossils of fish and worms

and if I kept straight on Texas Rt 62
there’s little luck I would find water,
just dry ravines and a mirage of rain.

*** 

Richard Long is Professor Emeritus of English at St. Louis Community College, now retired in Santa Rosa, California. For twenty-six years, he has edited and published 2River, quarterly publishing The 2River View and occasionally publishing individual authors in the 2River Chapbook Series. Poems of his have appeared recently in Black Coffee Review, Red Wheelbarrow, TravelArtist Hub, and UCity Review.