Quartzsite

(February 2022. Van-Aid nomad event on Plomosa Road in Quartzsite. IYKYK.)

Quartzsite

Another sunset in paradise!

Surely I should live like this
Forever from the freedom of my mobile home.
For what is freedom but not mobility?

Here we have gathered individually
To settle a city on wheels.
The architecture is customizable,
Blocks of bodies and buses
Infinitely re-movable and fluid⁠—
In the daily case of sunsets, climbable.

Every day in the desert,
From roughly November to March
The nomads in caravans ascend for sunset
And howl as a wild tribe together
When the sun hits mountain horizon.
It is the most important work of the day.

I’ve been writing on my busroof long,
But desert sunsets are unwritably longer.

Ranges of moderate mountains overlap
In dark blue of different distances
Ringing a larger land than you can imagine.
You must spin in a circle
And absorb the spectacular sparseness
Stark and long yourself.

Blue grows bold over orange,
And Orion dimly lights behind me
Shining through the bluing blue,
Stars softly grading into existence
As they have striven to since noon.

The midheaven is overhead
I hovering light like the half-blown moon.

Heaven is mostly darkness,
And light to write is hard to find
As the stars, though not few,
Are very very far between.

Into the night the mountainous horizon
Smolders orange like red-hot western coals.
I trust the other side of the world
To watch the fire while I sleep.
I will bank coals, and have no doubt
I will see another sunset tomorrow.