Obsidian

Wasp-waisted, Pony Express monument

leaps angry bronze mount: communicating news

East, hazed across waste

by fatal stone, arrows which rotate

slowly through the heart when they kill.

Is that real? tourist kid, pointing

at leaping pony's cast gonad:

blistered in summer glare,

No, let's look at the river.

Spherical beaver, paddlefeet,

mossy. rolls along the bank.

What about that? girl in thong rocks

on idling Jetski, bronze legs wrapped

around housing, cheeks,

flattened on wet vinyl, suggestive of exercise,

No, she is part of something else,

and those immigrants, fishing,

live in old worlds.

Steam boat terminal,

rail museum, rolling up the hill,

pronghorn, boomtown, water cannon, cattle,

timber, obsidian. Alfalfa.

Pioneers lined out, the trail

engraved on rock, kicking up blades,

tire tracks, boot-prints, bones.

Coyote trotting over sunburned foothill

stranded among tuned wire fences,

tracking down the last wild beast,

dead in its tracks.