"Trust" by Pete Mladinic

Their nocturnal journey almost over,

The coyotes’ melodic yelps

Woke me at 5 AM, the Big Bend,

In the distance the Christmas

Mountains.

The day before, I saw a ridge where

Javalinas had eaten the hearts

Of low to the ground lechugillas.

Hiking Terlingua Creek

I found a heart-shaped rock

I could see through: flat land for miles

Dotted by sage and bladed plants,

Not standing cactus

But ones low to the ground,

Oval-shaped,

Leaves like pillows to beautify a sofa.

Needles stuck to my thumb

And index finger. Both bled a while.

Later I felt a hardness, a soreness

In my thumb and thought poison

But nothing to worry about here,

The beginning of March.

At dark the wind dies. What trees

Are waist-high have branches we

Turned to firewood.

I remember mesas at sunset

Part red, part blond;

The vein Jim found in a rock wall

In Terlingua; moist mountain

Lion tracks and tracks

Of deer above a badger hole.

God forgot to make badgers humble,

Scotty said. He’s ten years gone.

I remember the ghost town’s

Stone walls of houses,

And above them the wedding’s guitar

Music. The rabbits, roadrunners.

Jim and Scotty

Hurled stones across the Rio Grande

Into Mexico, Pas Lajitas

Marsh grass and scrub, the other

Side.