It’s been 37 hours, no sign of the mountains

We light up a fire and wait for the mist to ease
My old man’s walking the floor like a skeeter
In tune with the big rigs passing down on the Highway
It is a death dance, they are jammed,
like mating crows and there is no turning back

He says slow down your inhale
“There is a pulse in these ridges
thicker than your desire”
I am still a victim of my impatience
We sit and wait under a newborn crescent

He says some thirty years ago
flocks would migrate here all over from Africa
from red cranes to mighty eagles
And on the hills at dusk,
you could hear the laugh of lovers
Watching over them like the holy divine

Now there are no lakes
There are only highways
Marrying his salvaged land to their republic

But there is madness and there is freedom
Where their order ends and these hills begin