What the Salt Flats Remember

The flats hold light the way old glass holds light— bent, amber, thickened into something you could almost drink.

A crow lands and the silence reorganizes itself around the fact of him. He does not stay long. Nothing does.

Beneath the crust, water from an inland sea that dried before anyone had a word for sea. It waits with no particular patience.

Tire tracks from last summer's film crew still cut across the surface, shallow ruts going somewhere the map no longer agrees to show.

At dusk the sky comes down to meet its reflection and for a moment there is no horizon, only the sensation of standing inside light.