Night winds howled down from north canyon walls

blowing away sweet dreams from the sleepless 

to some place beyond

• the opium dens of Paris
• the brothels of Bankok
• the underground jazz bars of Kerouac’s San Francisco

where the poets and philosophers rest in a tea stick haze.

Do these dreams of meaninglessness 

travel to a far distant ancient Olympus

where grey eyed warrior Athena lives

with her snakes and owl of wisdom?

I rest alone in a vast desert of loneliness

in a fragrant copse of piñon and cedar

amongst the snakes and scorpions

who are my only friends and enemies.

A full fall equinox moon rises with cold light.

A wildcat screams from across the arroyo.