Fifty-two miles
southwest of Ely,
the swollen black udder
of the storm cow
hangs just above
the sage and sand.
Her teats brush the tops
of lone junipers.
A dark curtain of rain
parts briefly revealing
the ruins of a ghost motel
in the dead hamlet
named Currant.
Some philosopher, poet,
or vandal has scrawled
with midnight blue sharpie
on the wall of a room
above a mattress mounded
with guano: no gods exist.
On a boarded up house
across the junction with the road
to Duckwater: spray-painted
black arrows, one pointing up
and one pointing down,
accompany the words:
as above, so below.
It’s another hundred and seventeen
miles to Tonopah, the rain turns
to howling fine-grained snowy grit,
battering the warning signs
about cows on the range.
So few fellow travelers, no services.
