for Giuliano Capecelatro
ANDALUSIA
Do not rush
into a desert night
Shield your eyes
against these stars
Recall the North—
decades demanded
simply to hint
at spruce or ice
Move a hand slowly here
The wide-eyed lizard
beside your pen
has seen a ghost
GENIUS LOCI
I have packed
the wrong books
into this desert—
of northern gods
who rage and sweat
in their dark fur
Here, a languid demon
only nods
toward the courtyard
and the smallest of ants
silently removes
a dying cricket
from the hot
white stone
DESERT PROPHECY
As the shard
works its way
through stone
up into the sun
you will rise
from night’s matrix
Today, you will brush
centuries of earth
from a fragment
of thought, reveal
an ancient potter’s
perfect green and blue
Later, in the heat
you will obsess
over white,
then sleep
without closing your eyes
SURVIVAL
I would never thrive here
but I might survive
as a fragment, of course,
as a shard
something once fashioned
by a strong brown hand
then aged in sand,
sturdy and simple—
or as a scavenger
whose rare cry
might be heard at dusk
in deference, in homage, to all
something that small: the slave
of a slave, shadow of a shadow
who worships among cactus
trusts to thorns
and begins each night with please
LEARNING LORCA
Too much history here
I cannot sleep
Cold lightning
to the west
over the Sierra Nevada
tonight
startles the centuries
awake and back
into hunger—
Huge black horses
trample winter’s
garden again
laughing
outriders
dark matter
made flesh
THE VOTIVE FIGURE
Awakened
by some fierce new god
striking the old mountains
exhumed by his storm
I sit up
after centuries
abraded but amazed
to feel
desert wind again
I have survived all
I was meant
to placate or reveal
And am now pure—
art and in anyone’s service
Though born in Norway, Erling Friis-Baastad was raised in the U.S. and has spent most of his adult life in the Yukon Territory, Canada. His poems have appeared in a number of chapbooks and collections, as well as many literary journals and anthologies. His most recent collection is Wood Spoken: New and Selected Poems (Harbour, 2005). The Andalusia poems were written while in residence at Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain. The suite will be part of a new collection of poetry entitled Fossil Light.
