Ann E. Michael

High Desert

The Rio Frijoles, small but lively, murmurs and glints, trawling amid green. Water striders float in miniature cove pools, songbirds trill in shrubby oaks. A piercing crow-call unsettles pines. Whiptails scurry on hard-packed trails dotted with cottonwood fluff. I am resting. Alone.

Uncomfortable on ladders and afraid of heights, I’ve asked her to go on without me up to the ancient, emptied village in sandstone caves that loom over the creek. Above those ruins, cliffs rise. Above cliffs only sky—if sky were ever only, endless and bright, blue desert sky.

I hear her laughter in between canyon wren’s descending whistles. She’s made friends among the other tourists, she’s good at that. In dappled shade, in-breathing the terpene scents of pinyon, juniper, and ponderosa, I’m happy. I say to myself happy and the crow concurs and cottonwood puffs bob and circle in a breeze and soon she will climb back down to the path with a story about place, and what more do we need in life but a river and a story?

everything
the river nourishes
gives back
one small life
at a time

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About the Author

Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection (2024) is Abundance/Diminishment. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, One Art, Ekphrasis Review, and many others, as well as in numerous anthologies, six chapbooks, and two previous collections. She chronicles her writing, reading, and garden on a long-running blog at www.annemichael.blog

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