WINTER SUNSETS

The winter-bared trees at sunset
Reflect the day’s last dying embers.
The light-line creeps ever higher
Looking like Southwest canyon rimrock.

I think of Big Bend, or Canyonlands,
As the first full moon of winter
Rises slowly in the eastern sky,
And hangs pendant o’er now-gray limbs.

Did some Comanche of times past
Stop to absorb a similar sky?
Standing here, in my own footprints
To take stock of his own inmost self?

Sunset’s last treetop fingertips fade;
The moon looms higher in the dusky chill.
I am more one with the world that is,
Finding peace that I already had.

Jan. 1, 2007