Upon reading the latest incarnation of my poems, I am compelled to drive northward, back to my reservation to see how the poem echoes in that desert. I want to find a place where the red rocks will face the sun without looking away or squinting. Perhaps in a cornfield. Just someplace, I can feel connected again, to my roots if you will, to hear the blue birds rustle in the juniper trees, the coyotes howling in the distance under the clear blue night, sheep bells clanking and muted by wool in the corral.

Cicadas.

The drone of summer in Tucson, 100+ degrees outside my duplex. Writing again. Updating CV, feeling like I just landed from outer space and this body is brand new to me. I am thankful for all the places I've been, the great poets I've read alongside, the vistas and valleys I've seen from the plane window. But for now, I am enjoying the serenity of being trapped indoors with books to read, music to download, and a book length poem to finish. I put my hands up in front of me wondering if I am really in one place again.

These have been strange days. . . I feel somewhat altered today. As a poet, I always feel that's its difficult to stop my thinking from thinking. Somewhere in the moment when a thought has reached beyond words, I build an image to try to capture it's feeling. It's more difficult than it seems, and sometimes, I wish there was a handbook for poets that warns of building fires too close to home. Finally, after five years of consistent travel and reading appearances, the poems are beginning to arrive, and with each door they open, there are others that slip by and rattle their teeth in the dark where I refuse to look. My office is a mess, my mind is caving away to a new one and the heat is pouring its white heat onto these hours.