far

Poetry

A Desert Crossing

Victor McConnell
issue four

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She tied the belt on her cotton robe,

tightened the cap on her water skin,

and cinched the straps on her sandals.

Where, she asked, can I find a sliver of desert

that gets some rain and isn’t too hot?

Also, she added, some tall trees,

like the ones I sat under as a child.

The goat herder waved his hand at her.

Why are you bothering me, he said,

asking about a place that doesn’t exist?

And are you planning to cross this desert

without any food?

She pointed toward the western dunes.

There are bones out there, she said,

and while I don’t expect to get hungry,

if I do I’ll suck the marrow.

Ah, he said, yes. There are always

bones in the desert.

She thanked him and traveled west,

slipping up over one dune and down another.

She’d always heard stars compared to grains of sand,

but as night fell she couldn’t recall

which were more numerous.

The morning sun toasted her neck

before the evening sun burned her eyes

as she walked through another hot day

and another cold night.

She’d never heard of a river in the desert,

and she was sure she was hallucinating

when she saw the dark blue house

nestled along the bank

beside the clear water.

A man sat on the porch,

and he waved at her, 

as if her arrival were expected.

A palo verde tree cast shade across the porch,

though the man sat outside of its shadow.

He was shirtless and his skin was warm,

she knew without even touching it.

On the table beside him was

a metal water pitcher, 

a glass jug of red wine,

an untouched loaf of bread, 

and a stack of books.

She dropped the bone that

she’d been gnawing on self consciously

and stood in front of the porch.

Please, he said, have a seat, join me.

The chair was wooden and she eased into it

and leaned against its back, exhaling.

He held out the pitcher and 

she drank straight from it, long and deep,

and then he filled two cups with wine 

and tore off a chunk of bread and placed it 

in her empty hands.

The bread was warm, not long out of the oven,

and she took a bite and closed her eyes, chewing.

When she opened them, he was smiling at her.

He lifted the top book off of the stack and opened it.

Now, he said, would you like to hear a story?