Leaving Black Rock

Leaving Black Rock

This place was water once,
an ocean, till someone
pulled the plug, and mastadons,
blinded by salt and sunlight,
surrendered their skulls…

You can see what held it together
by what is left--the space asks you to abandon something
beyond rusted transmissions, bucket seats

which carry you to an empty place to fill you up,
put heart and sweat into building something
--dreams turned in your hands like pinchpots:
greenware, boneware, stoneware, stone--
fired in the kilns of longing

What you sacrifice
must be beautiful, the barter
must be meaningful
You cannot trade a few used D-batteries
for the silk slip
someone loved her in,
You cannot trade a short
shabby wicker man
for all of your ills purged on this playa,
You need something

bigger than mile after mile of clean slate
bone white
clay, salt that leaves its signature
in cracks, little hexagons
of alkaline, silicates of soil
taking their place in ordered chaos,
telling you what it is in its breaking apart

(gypsum in your pores after three days of salt walking,
parched skin like your arizona grandma's bare heels,
torn and feathered at the back)
the fissures map the way in,
unravel the seamstress' jagged pattern.

Someone was born here at dawn,
slipped like a trout from her dark wet sack,
took the hero's journey from fin to foot
into the light, eyes wide open...

You have to make
the journey,
you have to bring
your water,
you have to shape
your survival.

Why don't you turn,
sister,
your blinker's been on
for jeezus knows
how long




Eilish Nagle
Black Rock Desert, 1996