THE FRINGES OF SAN BERNARDINO BASIN by Rand William

In prolonged baritones beneath my sleep

chords from tires drone against the roadbed;

some pneumatic drummer, Pan of desert heat,

leads a mirage of nomads thund’ring through my head,

                                    while sunset stretches

elongations of light around my feet.

In the heat, my dream assembles for the séance.

Caravans from pantheistic worlds

parch my dream clean to my crazing eyelids

while processions of dunes, huge wave troughs,

statuaries and nature’s naked gods camel by.

Nothing humanly sacred, save the road,

that feeds into the marled catacombs,

where split-hooved Min strikes the dry tympanum.

Between the mountains, sand advances like the moment glass;

underbelly of time’s obscure hamadryad—

                                    each drifting pulse

instills in me the gnosis of a dream—

as my hour sifts through its funnel of dull glass

and i peer far into the gainless sea;

animal cloud distortions—shifting mirrors—

cotton shadows, frayed and desolate.

But there is no water, no bursting rain,

the very desert bug is an arid thing,

                                   it has no drool.

Yet are my synesthesian senses melting

through these sinews of bone-white sand

inside what eolian realm dwells Erato;

spring of barren abundance, whose creature dolphins

                                     under a saffron of dust

in cool virgin seas under the tundra

clear my mind with fever my seraph,

steal into my blood my demimondaine;

for whose intelligence—

                                      in whose oratorium ultimately

                                      i suspire with lust—

whose condition blows faceless my face—

so close are we untouching bodies—

My sole-self burns from the waist up.