Even as the heat rises up off chili fields

and canopied pecan groves into summer

ghost-smoke-smog cloaking, clearing the Organs

into invisible ether, we watchers of skies in dark,

Out-There bristly trails skirting Chihuahuan rump,

scrub-brush and bramble, sweet mesquite and acacia,

pungent barrel cacti, damp mushroom must, patchouli waft,

overcome by scent and sensate beauty behind obvious

endless beige and ecru-verde hotbox haze, blur, absence,

no sign or star or glint to follow, believe in, here, or There

we vanish into, wisps before rites, rituals, figures emanate

as though wrought from opiate dream, pliant, fluid, Daliesque,

where green-day-diva-life-light never finds us once gone.