As the brash sun
lifts the edge of night,
dunes stretch and yawn,
their contours blushing
as they awaken…
the morning sun climbs
overhead like
a rocket, its hot exhaust glazing
the sky into porcelain
as white as these sands…
the dunes become
crouching chameleons,
hiding their round fullness
in the noon sun…
a single scarab
scratches her way
across a smooth, sloping
dune, embossing
intricate calligraphy
into the sifted sand:
a message to be read
by the slanting sun
of evening…
dune islands rise,
their shores lapped
by moon-shadow seas.
—
Roy Beckemeyer, of Wichita, Kansas, has traveled over much of New Mexico. A retired engineer, he launched rockets at White Sands Missile Range in the 1980’s. He has recently had poems published in Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, Coal City Review, and the Kansas Renga: To the Stars Through Difficulty.
200 New Mexico Poems 