When I woke yesterday
I couldn’t put my finger
on the horizon,
mistook dust for fog,
didn’t know that soon the wind
would swirl my hair from its roots
and I could only find the horizon,
the flat calm loneliness of the southwest,
by lying down. Dust crept
under the bedroom door—
went unnoticed,
but later I sensed the graininess
under my skin, as I passed
my husband in the hallway.
As the sun set, I entered the garden
wanting to anchor my short fingernails
into the warm, brown soil—
instead, I was tossed against the rock wall
like debris, discarded from a moving car—
alone and forgotten.
—
LeeAnn Meadows lives on the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM with her husband in an old adobe motor court. She has published poems in Sin Fronteras, Lunarosity, Words on a Wire and Many Voices.
200 New Mexico Poems 