RED CANYON SPRINGS

On the rim of Red Canyon
my eyes rise to movement in the canyon below.
Coyote drinks from a red pool cupped between boulders.
Water in dry places is unexpected and welcome
so we scramble the cliff down broken limestone scree
over white and pink pock-faced siltstone,
down to the trickling creek.

Smoke laps and lolls in a puddle thick with orange silt.
I soak my head in a clear deep pool between the rocks.
Water beetles rise from the muck for air.
I rise up and breathe deep,
head like a watermelon chilled in ice.

We jump boulders to the next spring pool
deep enough to take our naked bodies whole.
We are heads floating, dog and man
in the cool emulsion of earth blood and earth flesh.

We rise from the water and soak in sun heat and boulder heat
beneath the wind talk of cottonwood leaves
and buzzing flies quick to animal warmth and blood.
I cup the red mud, smear my white skin with clay
and let the sun fire me to terra cotta.

Flesh clots and crumbles and flakes into landscapes.
Roots toe into the muck and seek a place to suck.
Blood thins and pulses up from the deeper valves.
Paws inscribe the mud, man dog deer coyote and coon.
All drawn to the lap of water from the cool red 
womb of the springs of Red Canyon.


© 1998 by Richard W. Todd

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