Leave the flower to glory in the sun.
Watch the red-tailed hawk circling in a blue
Bowl of light above the paloverde and
Sagebrush, hot with the spring's brief ecstasy -
An echo of Nero
Playing his violin,
The notes rising
Like balloons.

See the wild jackrabbit's red-veined ears
Quiver with fear as the light glances
Off the edges of the leaves and the hawk
Curves into the sun, the eye crying
From the pain of light.

Then, a marionette of a monoplane
On broken strings, drilling the air up and down,
Round and round -
The hawk coming out of the sun,
Smoothing the jagged edges of the wind.

Beneath me, the land,
Broken and tamed,
Traversed by road and canal,
Horizons infinite of misty hills and
Groves bedecked with orange Christmas balls
And a dry riverbed going nowhere -

And Nero playing his violin -
The notes rising
Into the sharp
Blue bowl of light.