Previously

Alligator hunters know

the best way to get the big ones

is to imitate the distress calls

of the hatchlings.

Ants will sacrifice

their bodies to the flames

that threaten the colony.

Elephants visit

the graveyards

of their dead

and caress the bones.

I thought that twenty days

in the desert would suffice

for my contemplation

on these and other matters.

I'd sit beside a creosote bush

under the warm but weak

January sun at Furnace Creek.

Get in touch with God

and the Universe.

But I was wrong.

The weakness was my own.

The tab of orange sunshine

I'd brought along to facilitate

my meditations,

only allowed me to imagine

myself as a lizard

gazing out from his stony haven.

I could have done that at home.

Which was the actual nexus

of my discontent.

The weather turned.

A wind that never paused.

Sand and dust that soon

was caked in my long hair.

I borrowed some dish soap

from a family that looked at me

like I was nuts. And by the way

that was all the food I had,

a big bag of dried fruit and nuts.

I washed the grit out of my hair

in a sink in the campground restroom

and headed for the visitors center

to await the endless wind's surcease.

I must have watched the informative films

in the small theater there a dozen times.

Eventually I could quote the script exactly

drone on in that flat documentary

narrators style. About the geology,

the history and the mines.

The survival strategies

of flowering desert plants,

the tiny population of pupfish

in the Devil's Punchbowl,

and stranded pioneers.

Anything to fight the dribbling

hours and minutes while

the howling wind refused to die.

I sat down on a bench to watch

the families peering into

the glass encased exhibits

about borax mining

and the Devil's Cornfield

and a girl about my age sat down

beside me. We said hi, where you from,

are you bored? Then she asked me

if I wanted to make out.

We went into the theater

and waited for the lights to dim.

Kissed and stroked

until desire got so stoked

that we needed to find

a more private spot.

Her family was camping in a motor home,

no telling when they'd be back.

So I said, you wanna go to my campsite,

I have a tent and she eagerly agreed.

The wind was still like a dragon's

frozen breath and the dust still had teeth.

When we got to my camp,

she said, This is it?

My tent was just a thin black plastic tube.

Kind of like a extra large lawn and leaf trash bag

with a line of nylon rope strung though it

and lashed between two scruffy tamarisk trees.

Inside I had my army surplus

down mummy bag, which

was rated for sub freezing weather

but barely had room for one person to sleep,

let alone anything more adventurous.

She said, Oh. that's a chastity sack,

we gotta find something better than that.

But there wasn't so we walked

back to her family's motor home,

had one last goodnight kiss,

and promised to see each other

the next day.

They must have left before the sun rose.

The wind had finally calmed,

and a dawn of a different sort

arose within my mind,

that desert solitude in a wasteland

when the problem is loneliness,

is just a waste of time.

I could ponder about pachyderms

and alligators and the face of God

just as well back home.

And perhaps if I was lucky,

I'd find someone who shared

the same curiosity and desire.