Stillness

Tonight I went for a short walk alone.  There were a few inches of water in the arroyo, just enough to make a soft sound.  I sat at the edge of the concrete with the mountains to my back and the mesa, the open West in front of me.  There were clouds backlit by the setting sun, and mourning doves flying back and forth over the water, landing on telephone wires and trees, cooing and then moving on to settle at the bank, mauve feathers and gentle eyes glowing in the late light.  It was the kind of quiet, clear blue evening that made me understand why people like Georgia O'Keefe and D.H. Lawrence came here--- it was a landscape for poets and painters to explore over and over again, to feel utterly alone in, to try to understand.