DESERT PROLOGUE FOR A WRITER

Our friend Heather
Is moving to Vegas.
She spent a couple of nights 
With us in Ojai
Before driving to Burbank

Where she boarded a flight
For Paradise, Nevada.
She has rented an Apartment
Close to the Strip
Sight unseen.

Heather and I
Are both fans of
Claire Vaye Watkins
Who teaches at U.C. Irvine
And lives in the Mojave Desert.

A few years ago CVW wrote 
A Futuristic Desert Epic
Called Gold Fame Citrus
Set in a schlerophytic and 
Fiery Los Angeles.

Her desert thrums
To a messianic beat:
A place of spiritual refuge
Where time is eternally filled
With the presence of the Now.  

Vegas projects this Divine Immanence.
Distantly shadowed by 
Lunar Crater volcanic field
It is a place Under a Volcano
Of Dissolution and Creativity.

Where once smoke and lava
Vented through over two hundred cones
Along the Reveille and Pancake ranges
Their vestigial whispers
Now batter the soul.