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Rich Youmans

New Mexico

Beyond the pueblo walls, turkey vultures scrape their shadows over short grass and snakeweed. Along the roadside, under piñon pine, an old Zuñi woman sits next to her blanket of silver and turquoise jewelry. She watches the thunderheads rising far beyond the Sandia’s peaks, a storm that may never lay a drop on her sunken cheeks. Scorpions burrow into desert sand, rattlesnakes shed their skins. On sun-baked mesas, lizards become one with the boulders on which they lie: through shades of sienna and burnt orange, just one small, lidded eye.

full moon
so cool in my palm
this white clay bowl

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Author’s Note: This haibun is a revision of one that originally appeared in Modern Haiku 36:1 (Winter-Spring 2005) as part a linked sequence, “Apricot Tree,” with David Cobb and Ion Codrescu.

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About the Author

Rich Youmans lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Alice. His latest chapbook, Head-On: Haibun Stories, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in 2018.