Inamorata

Inamorata

This time of year she starts a-calling.
“I want your hands on me.” she says
“It’s been too long since last I felt your touch.”

Windblown and gritty-voiced she calls
sage-eyed in smoke and dust.
The desert is my lover 
and in time she calls me home.

Obscured in clouds at first she teases me
diaphanous in fog and mist and then-
at last, just at the terminus of day,
She shows her glory: washed in sunset,
naked, golden, bold. Demure no more.

A canny one, the desert. She knows how to call my name.
She lightly walks into my dreams
when least expected 
with a raven on her shoulder,
blood beneath her nails, 
and every pale surcease of sunset bids me turn….

she throws me off a cliff and I am falling,
each shade of red imaginable 
rushes towards my eyes until
the desert floor consumes me,
licks me up like flame or time,and I 
am turned 
to dust.