Ignatz Invoked

A gauze bandage wraps the land and is unwound, stained orange with sulfates. A series of slaps molds a mountain, a fear uncoils itself, testing its long cool limbs. A passing cloud seizes up like a carburetor and falls to earth, lies broken- backed and lidless in the scree. Acetylene torches now snug in their holsters, shop-vacs trundled back behind the dawn. A mist becomes a murmur, becomes a moan deepening the dust- choked fissures in the rock O pity us Ignatz O come to us by moonlight O arch your speckled body over the earth.