By Miles Waggener
built its nest where my worried shadow kept
unmoving to the side so I
could peer into its snags & snares
in relentless sunlight I’d stepped out to breathe some arid distance
& walk a desert living a desert’s ancient life at the edge of asphalt despair & roads
where my mother lived in her duplex in late dementia’s weathers at times lucid saying I never dreamed my one little life would ever have so many things
to forget other times frightened clutching an empty purse or asking me if
her friend was staying for lunch
that friend somewhere in our empty rooms if I turned my back on her
for a 30-minute walk would I find her fallen or soiled in her chair or trying to open the front door?
lifetimes of self-sufficiency of privacy have come to an end
in the gravel easement snarls of cactus barbs horned ocotillo bits cholla anything loose & sharp that could pierce & stick me
made a home in untidy perimeters with a need & fear I couldn’t
come near worlds of calcified tangles & claims—woven soon-to-be
abandoned or not-finished—something inhospitable & still a refuge
to the side there were piles of thorny exit passages false escapes what I needed was
an elaborate system to stay safe to protect us how
did it work? where was the door? had I to lift my shadow
up from its edge
to leave its thorny heart & go back where? I never dreamed my one little life
would ever have so many things there in the heat of the desert day
an animal slept beneath us
Miles Waggener is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Superstition Freeway, published by The Word Works. His new poems appear or are forthcoming in Nomadartx, Sugar House Review, Action-Spectacle, and Plume Poetry. He teaches at the University of Nebraska Omaha, where he directs the writing program.