The sky comes down
To the bare edge of rock
Profane and atheist. And all around
Filled with weather,
Soaring clouds, and cool breezes.
At the verge of a U-shaped canyon,
A stone-amphitheater
Sheer, sculpted cliffs
From a curved ridge of debris,
Towering over a broad lumbered valley And miscellany of boulders.
In the magic of bracken and grass, Hidden in the woods dense and dark,
Ponderosa, Lodgepole pines, and Douglas fir,
Dead-wood and downed-timber,
Tree-hanging lichen flourishes.
Tangled, elongated masses
Of green threads,
Long drapes—in yellow to ochre
Wrought from coyote hair,
Signify the burial-ground
In a sanctuary of bones For the first people.
Whirlwinds follow gusty squalls, Funnel in thunderstorms And fire from lightning strikes.
The resulting conflagration
Burns until lamenting ends
—so, the dead may sleep undisturbed—
As winter storms
And summer droughts
Wash over the forest like a sea,
And the salmon return To spawn at Mono Hot-Springs.
Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, (AA) Fresno Pacific University, (BA), and California State University, Fresno (MFA). He is the former chairman of the William Saroyan Society, and a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Mr. Barile taught writing at Madera Center Community College, lives and writes in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Packinghouse Review, Undercurrents, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Beginnings, Pharos, and Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets.