Cyanic Dump

A faded sign warns the intruder “Do Not Enter”. The large gray hill looms large and dull below the mill, where nothing subsists and no animal dares venture.

Winter wind slaps the mountain over the narrow portal, the mill clangs dryly on the hillside above us. Children run, screaming after a mangy mongrel. I call my sons to keep them safe, safe from volatile compounds, from mineral particles, from cyanide and the unknown. Snakes have long retired to impoverished mines and abandoned prospects. They will writhe in a spring dance when the world awakens above them. Ready as we will be to hunt for whatever has survived.

Winter wind burns the lungs as I stumble down the path to chase chuckars away from the mining camp, away from hungry dogs and idle youths. Tomorrow the sleek gray partridges will be dinner for my own children, and I watch them grow, the bird, the hare, never taking more than we need to live on the arid land. Dogs dig the ashen hill for whatever died there.

Winter wind, green and dry, inflames my nostrils with cyanic anger, I scream in the zephyr. The miner’s children play king of the mountain on the oxides of horror-zinc-lead-or silver. I scream in the weather, though no one can hear me, nor much less care in the race to futility. School is too far away, their mother is too drunk, their father works underground. Their future looms large and rich as the dreams of the poor. I am but a stranger in a sterile land. Winter wind stirs caustic ripples about the ochre mound. Its peak is round like an old bald head covered with dripping crevasses of dried pus, caked for a half life. Miners die young above the ground. 

Curious teens approach with blasting caps in hand, ready for the holidays of fire and crackers. I warn everyone to stay clear of the dangerous explosives, the tallest turns around and pulls his full frame as large as he can stretch. “There’s no danger, I light those all the time” he fights the blustery gusts and draws nearer to my sons, I tilt my head to the right in a quick motion, all three run in the direction of my gesture. The two kids that tail their big hero erupt in spontaneous bursts of laughter that echo in the canyon across us. As the wind dies down, sheets of vapors and ethereal dust drop like drapes of gossamer cloth fainting upon the hillside.

The eldest of the juveniles finds a pack of matches and a lighter in the depth of his brown pants. He shows the goodies to his accomplices. “Now we can have fun” he declares at the top of his lungs. I shake my head and walk to him. His eyes recede in his flat face, no smile moves his dry lips, the youth recoils sideways to avoid my gaze. Shaking a firm “no” with my entire torso, I tell each of these miner’s children that their fathers will be punished or fired if the bosses find out they are in possession of mine property.

“Who’d tell’em?” they simultaneously ask, I reply “the ambulance driver”, “uh?” “oh, yes after your face is peppered by sulfur and metal” they turn to each other like chipmunks checking for the eagle’s shadow on the ground. “My dad is a powderman, he giv’em to me all the time, I never blowed mysef’ up, I know what I’m doin’”.his jaw juts out a good inch forward and his mouth closes under certainty of power.

“Have you seen any old metal stoves around?” I inquire. All of a sudden faces come alive and they stumble upon each other to show me where the best of treasures can be unearthed. We follow them, they erupt in a myriad questions about my accent, my kids, my clothes, what do I know, what they know, a veritable fireworks of curiosity and giggles takes place in this new sand circus. “Have you ever had jackrabbit? It’s good. And I know where you can get a hundred of them birds you were chasing up there—I can find some real good stuff for you in the old dumps, wanna come with us?” “I’ll show you!”.

The afternoon spent running on burro trails down the canyon mouth, we are all loaded with ancient artifacts, old tools in various states of disrepair, dolls with missing heads, chipped glasses, glassless spectacles, twisted wire and unreadable signs that invite hilarious guessing. We part newfound friends at the crossroad to our shacks. Making dates for further explorations on week-ends or summer vacation, job allowing, metal prices willing, never knowing when the ore runs out or when the miners call it quits. 

I am in the yard, sorting our collected prizes by immediate use, expected re-use or flat out creative purposes. Suddenly a sharp sound splits the still air above the valley. The boys and I stare at each other, we all stand stiff and frozen. We recognize the agony behind the scream. More yelling follows, I find myself running down the steep gravel road, I slip and glide not remembering that I am barefooted. The younger teens run toward me “don’t tell nobody! Don’t tell on him, please” they beg, scared little boys that they are, they still don’t believe powder is dangerous. I must promise before I approach the fallen oldest one. A few spots mar his face with driplets of blood, but his right arm is quite chewed up. I don’t believe he is a candidate for infection, the very heat of the burn must have cauterized his wounds. “as long as you keep the area clean, you’ll be fine, but you may hurt for a long time. The stuffing has left his ego, he whines and stares at his arm, someone’s little boy has played with fire and his daddy won’t feel sorry for him, his daddy will know he has taken these from his work jacket. There will not be any pocketfuls of presents anymore. Fait accompli! 

 

I run back to our house for bandages and sterilizer. My sons have waited with trepidation. I regale them with   descriptions of flesh and blood, the hanging skins and smell of scorched meat, making appropriate grimaces to emphasize the gruesome accident. To send a warning of caution in all things that burn or go boom! A chill courses through my veins when I think I have spotted more than mere curiosity in the youngest, I believe I have seen genuine attraction to risk taking in the bluest of his eye.

Mill gossip soon carried from shack to house kept me informed on the health of the teen. His father was later given his last check with a promise of not mentioning that he had committed the dreaded powder theft, code of honor among diggers. Never leave a job with a price or a crime on your head. He was a good man with a regular son. City or country, boys-will-be-boys is an expectation in the harsher places where men make a hard living up or down below. And mothers are often absent for all obvious and not so obvious reasons. Boys will be men. Maybe.

      Winter wind blows upon the hill where all children breathe. A lone buzzard circles in the fading day.

In the Face of Time:

A tiny fissure suddenly appeared above my lip, safely tucked in a shy smile. The toothbrush hid it, then revealed it between alternate gestures. Like a sin come to roost upon my ego, it highlighted vanity in one surreptitious glance.

Zero weather by day and minus by night had carved this latest assault on my good side. A pitiless blow to fair complexion or natural consequence to reckless behavior?. Time passed over me with neither pause nor respect. The mirror was to deliver blotchy news of seasonal excess in the beloved outdoors.

My loss of grip upon eternity had loosened a string which held features to ossature; as if the puppet master had abdicated his role upon such a rebellious visage. I saw the tendons hinging jaws with mannequin precision. I chewed and spewed and swirled the foam of shame in furious toothbrushing routine.

The crimp of skin now visible under light, a vertical line, a tiny scar of a harsh life risible in sun and snow. I examined patterns of ancestry. Mother had suffered the rigors of expectation in a skin obsessed culture, she had lived with a chain smoker and used her fair share of beauty products on a lifelong basis--to no avail.
Grand-Mother had never considered skincare an essential part of womanhood and yet had fared quite well in the hereditary past. I have also lived with chain smokers, first father then husband. I have left the temperate verdant South of France to run wild with my children in the American deserts..

Wherever I was to park my small mirror, a slow tan was to obfuscate any flaws in my freckled face. I did not attempt to manage sun damage. Neither mine nor tailing mounds of alkaline insult could ruin my determination to survive the elements between water wells or rare salt ponds.

Nor did I slather creams and lotions, much to mother's frustration after reminders and strict orders in letters. I remembered a youth of avoidance and terror. No way to escape the lotion wielding matriarch, bent on cornering me with her dreaded tubes of the newest gunk. Her intent being of producing a thoroughly marriageable damsel to some future suitor of largest means ( and I mean rich)

The deep trenches in her face reminded me of the futility of her expense. I often ran off to school balancing my leather satchel on one hand and a wash-mitten in the other sloughing off the odious goo from cheeks, hair and eyes till I could see the road ahead to flee from the scent and the assault..

Hello wrinkle mine, earned in time through gravel and dirt, through sand storm and wind chill.

Between Abbey and Rimbaud

Between Abbey and Rimbaud.

Yellow sun hanging on the horizon, sage aroma cleansing desert air along a ground hugging zephyr. I am surrounded by sounds of fall, a blue racer slinking to the edge of the salt pond, a last avocet pecking for surviving fish, a lone coyote venturing for an early meal of packrat or roadkill. Dry bunch grass crunching under step, i listen to faded pages flapping against my chest, leaves in a whirlwind.

I paid the price of 3 slices of bread for a tattered paperback of tradition in literature; a single dime which i had found in a parking lot in town. The money was light in the loser's pocket, yet the book rests, long and heavy upon my shelves.. And now authors part pages like open arms, to refill the reader in times of empty. I cannot peruse but a few lines in my will to absorb the direst of thought, minute details hurling images from a lake of words pooled behind my eyes.

A continent apart in another time, another tongue. Memory bidden, transcends form and texture to land upon mind and suspend all others. Two lines and i take flight across frontiers and centuries, unhampered by inventions of man, the current, my only connection.

Dry crumbs fall silently upon my lap, i reach for the canteen full of warm water, swish through teeth, throw back my head and listen to the lonely throat swallowing, begging for more. I pick up a stray cracker, grab a long muscle from the jack-rabbit leg; still tough from a night under hot stones in the sand pit oven outside. The old hare relinquishing essential protein, i make note to send thankful nods to her progeny, I may need them someday; for mine.

I have no hunger but for the single line, transfixed by bird song and empathy. Once the sand stirring wind has passed and consciousness afresh, i am fed and cleared of mundane concern by the light of some stranger, known of others, transcribing another life on paper, for me, another famished unknown at the end of the phrase.

House wife/Barfly

Lady of the desert, blank stare over the valley, in Rhyolite, this what happens when you stand too long in the sun.

The previous post has been removed to archives unknown for further dissection and reviving, the fictive elements clashing with the live memories muddled the literary scene.

This is what happens when the dishes are neglected on a hot day, solpugid in the dark.

Animal rights for all creatures, heron turning up his beak at the sight of another donkey mess on the pavement.. This is what happens when the arroyo dries up.

A Bat , Two Chicks and a White Heron

A Bat, Two Chicks and a White Heron...

Evening come, wind at rest, mosquitoes and gnats ready. The one street light flickers on as if the distant bray of wild burros had sent a command. Sweat trickles along the spine to signal time to replenish. I drink from the warm water in a tall mason jar. The springs on the daybed by the cooler signal another life. Fingers gripping jar, i rise slowly.

Little brown bat shakes her head, ears flapping, she stretches one arm, then the next in a nearly imperceptible shudder. she yawns and scans the air, and curls back in her head down posture along the boards until darkness calls. i sit further into the recess of the evening, waiting, looking into the vanishing mountain for a change of the guard.

The Desert big horn have spontaneously disappeared from the ridge above. Like cardboard figures being yanked from an Indian backdrop. Hunger pulls the vagus string inside, yet i will not move. Ever changing, ever present, the crepuscular theater unfurls as surround sound and scene. I will the night hawk to show the figure eight mastery of moth catching by the mercury light above. From behind the bean vines i miss not a turn, not a whoosh of wing. I am moth and dark bird, white tip and crooked beak, alone among sleek flying mates. flapping the last dance of a short life.

Amargosa toads erupt out of sand beneath the datura, seeking moisture and insects in the early relief from sun. I am spotted skin and long legs, ready to pounce and feed, to hop and mate by the silent narrow stream below, left over from last year's rain. Egret flies up at dusk and danger past, his belly full of tadpoles caught as captives in an algal puddle. His neck folded, his eye alert in this last effort of day. I see the land beneath his slow wing, unrolling mass of tamarack and olive, drained by the slimy runoff of man's disrespect.

Behind me, the house groans, the springs wince, as i breathe ever shallow breath to stretch the evening out into peace, little bat turns her head my way, takes flight and skillfully turns to the light pole, she circles and designs scrolls against the enveloping blackness beyond. The many little hawks have vacated and bats arrive from the few trees along the ghost banks of the underground river. Some have slid from hot attics in abandoned minor's shacks in the canyon. I am air gliding, whirling, cascading and swooping everything that flies to the attraction of a single light on the edge of the ghost town. The floor hisses behind the door, i swallow the tepid water rolling in my mouth in silent liquid motion.

From midway up the canyon walls, the unmistakable call of a burro threatens intruders on his descent into the gully to extract a drink of sinking waters. Angry brays echo from another trail, hooves send sharp slate shards and rolling stones down the steep incline. A female warns her young of impending kicks and savage bites. I am gray and brown, and jumping out of the way, hiding behind a vegetal screen watching the invisible coming to the impossible along the desert floor. I am mother of foal and nursing protector of health, i find the grass, the rose and the squash in sad front yards of mistaken species. The door hinge squeaks between violent honking and fights, i set the quart jar on the porch floor.

Two chicks peep timidly from a box, hanging off the edge of cardboard, they squawk for feed, cracker crumbs and grassy meal, They live between need and purpose, a short span at best. I am egg, i am fowl, feather and nourishment, i am here, and night closes the screen of consciousness in a ring of darkness. I am the lonely animal, preserving, prolonging, from the shadow where the one coyote will sense me long after the equines have had their meal of amaranth and bunch grass, the heron will sleep in the lone cottonwood. And i will find comfort in the donkey snorting in a dream on the flank of his female and young genie by the tree.

In the early hour when all are asleep, i will know the soundless pad of coyote. The bat hung on her board, the heron curled in his twigs up high, and the chicks in their powder box cage dwelling, all secure in the day done and the next not quite ready.