The Friar’s Camp: Song Contest (cont’d)

1. El Donado Marcos de la Sierra

Day after day
the lizards dance on the sand.
When the sun climbs high
the mountains won’t
sit still. Even the tortoise
toiling as little as he can
moves in time with the maguey’s
sharp-tongued shadow.

Sun. Tree. Stone. Sky.
The will to circle in the wind.
To walk like Lucifer up
& down in the earth
or lope like Coyote, always
one meal from the end.

Let the fullness without
break the drought within–
the way all teeming
prayers & curses seem
to seed the clouds,
go stepping out with feet of rain
on a Galilee of air.

This very day I too
will begin dancing.