Painter Spring

A generation of crickets hatch and swarm
across a road, across an alkali flat,
all in the same direction
even if not the same place,
crickets answer to a higher power
embedded in their every cell,
an inner voice that says, ‘not here’.

At Painter Spring there are no homeless,
every reptile and mammal finds a ledge
or tree to curl under, across the valley
a light snow falls, obscuring the salt flats,
crisp air replaces smells of juniper,
sage, alkali dust, it gets cold here,
some turn back to wait the winter in Stinkwater,
the rest pack up and head west in a swarm
that doesn’t make it across the playa
to the way station at Marjin Pass.

In a couple months the Russells bring a sled
and take the debris back to Hidden Canyon,
a wagon with a broken wheel, two buckets
and a shovel, a piano, five boots
with torn-out soles, blacksmith tools, a transit
and tripod, three ghosts and a poltergeist.

The sled glides over dry snow in starlight,
horses vent into the still air,
Brenda Russell blocks the cold with a blanket,
she can’t block the disquiet, not here.

There’s no room in Chicago, Sadie is turned out,
she gets cold, thinks ‘somewhere else or bust’,
packs her bag and buys a one-way
to Saint Jo, turns her back on the east
and faces the great western blank spaces.

Early next summer Sadie’s at Painter Spring
watching a mirage over Swasey Ridge.
She crosses the playa, then Marjin Pass,
gets stuck in Boyd for a decade
before she catches the next swarm.