Stopped on the Terminal Road

A scarlet rouge glow at the edges of indigo smudged by finger circles of grape, a vibrant liquid sky skirted low by india ink molds of sleeping braves and pregnant women, nautilus ears and cat backs. I stopped at the top of a hill on the dirt road unable to understand my place in this. My windows were down, rapidly chilling air seeping in, but no sounds. Lights in kitchens glowing out into the sage from houses marooned like ships on the old sea bottom. No cars behind me, I felt my toes constricted in my boots and longed to be naked, to have tough enough feet to leave my boots and my car behind, to breathe out into the desert and find the canyon rim and follow it north to the river's source. A flood of dinosaur memories made me see myself low to the ground, my back arched to take weight off my hands. That smell of clay under a sky I can describe only as modern, more modern than technology, a screen for the movie of old stories absorbing into that blue, that butane cupping the long crescent moon, everything that has crept through this valley from Creede down to Mexico; big cats and mammoths, wolves and mastodons, hunters and rabbits. Down to Guatemala, up to Alaska, bright moons to guide and light the dark pumice rock. And I sat, paralyzed, looking west wondering about the water, feeling wrung, but knowing from the smell of sage that I could walk, just walk, no sweater or hat or coat with a hood - just me in my skin with my own fire and an internal compass to send me north.