Santa Fe Unsettled

Square-jawed mountains
judgmental and hard-faced
ring a cotton-mouthed basin of
armored plants and snakes
with turbulent tails this cauldron forged
from volcano spew and the kicked-up dust
of horse hooves and strung-out spirits from
coyote dung and the sticky blood of red wounds

This cupping of unstable alchemy of heat
from the friction of souls passing portals in
close contact and the spiraling velocity
of an eddying vortex of the breathless still
of high desert antimatter of the white cold of
the full wolf moon and the congenital tension
of chiaroscuro all this wrangling of exceptional elements
this cupping of torrents and stasis