Odessa, Texas 1966

We drove a crooked road
flat, empty, no landscape,
hot with smells beyond our world.
We are dozing, riding and off to work.
One side some few cows with heads
to the ground behind taut wire.
My lonely soldiers suspended in time.

The other side cotton fields
in memory only and barely alive,
blown now by wild hot winds,
disappearing as we drive
into turbulent dust in the air.
The atmosphere swirls into the air
and aims at noses, our mouths.
The air is crunchy and bitter.
Odessa, 50 years ago.

I worked derricks, high in the air
able to see the moon without dust
the moon was round and fairy fair;
I was barely able to sight the earth below.
Sometimes the world is mostly rust
The wind whistling songs no one knows.

Within the wind, dry bitter whirls,
something in my head clatters
and breaks away into huge black birds
drinking their black gold,
endlessly in slow repetition -
a continuous hungry motion
heads dipping into the stinky ground.

There are no more cows, no cotton.
There is no smell beyond black gold.
I cannot touch my hand to your hair
after such a night:
I cannot endure caressing
someone I care so much about
within the bounds of such illusions.
Odessa, Texas 50 years ago