hosho mccreesh | truth or consequences

Truth or Consequences

…it’s the salt cedar–thick, suffocating, merciless–
plain as mineral striations on each lakeside cliff,
Elephant Butte is dying…

& it’s the goddamned salt cedar,
it’s furious thirst respecting nothing,
it’s furious thirst murdering the Bosque,
leaving only saturated silt banks,
sand against sedimentary clay…

I guess when they found him–our young, wild mustang–
his beautiful bones propped up against a thatch of salt cedar,
his legs buried, deep as taproots, into the baked, cracking earth,
his head finally too heavy to keep up anymore,
the birds had long taken his big brown eyes,
the weather & the insects the rest…

They told me that the wind just howled out there,
whistled through those sun-bleached bones,
through that mouth, propped open just so,
they said it was something
you wouldn’t soon forget–

seeing the dead sing again,
hearing that haunting song…

I wasn’t there for him.

Hosho McCreesh | Illustration by Hosho McCreesh

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