The Bent Air

The untouchable bends, a bowl that spools the air, unwinds it, throws it up and towards us and catches the ravens’ talons in the bristles of it, the pinyon pine, the turkey vultures in a square, sailing together toward the dying sun, and the moon, up from the dense, bent echoes, the dark, still places in the in-between, in the distance, the calm, bent walls, the purple outlines that lengthen at dusk, that inhale the other colors, the very rays of the sun, the dotted cliff-sides, the sharp click of rocks chipping against one another. Clouds like plates, with flat bottoms, and wisps of rain caught up in the sky. Long streams of mist that never touch the ground.