The orange sky burns
cloud timbers graying and ashen
purple smoke escapes
the embers, blue sky becomes
more rare succumbing
as the fire spreads from the horizon
toward the moon and venus.

Columns of fire support the sky
upon a platform of gray clouds
between each blink of an eye
the boundary, a division, moves closer
to our shelter and the earth.

I walk the barren shoreline
dividing the dried riverbed and
oil caked rocks and I see nothing
for miles until the dry-docked rigs come into view
tilting / listing / leaning / skewed
toward the ocean floor.

Wind blows hollow through abandoned
metal walls and the rusting drill-bit
forever posed waiting for nature to finish its unending work.

A stark contrast to shipwrecks
strewn across the exposed ocean floor.

And I wonder where this memory arrived from
as I have not visited this desolation in person –
only within.

I watch the moon elope across the southern sky
through the reflection in the frosted glass table.

I long for your hand embraced across from us.

The medicine man heard sporadic pleas
through open windows, silent cries each morning
missing you as August rains overrun parched land
and dying black-eyed susan.