Before Vegas

Before Vegas

I remember

when the air was so cold and still

that our eyes ran with the smoke

from that first pipe

and we heard the geckos stir

beneath the goatskin blankets.

Our songs echoed through the canyons

and beyond with a story

both as constant and as changeable

as the herd tracking the seasons

across the blood-red dust that

traced the contours of our weathered skin.

How the babies cried

as we chorused to welcome

the crack of new day.

And while the women suckled

we wove baskets for nuts

and watched again as

the earth met the sky with a

passion as hot as a reckless youth

on his first foray

eyes like polished arrow-heads

igniting the desert in a blaze of

crimson mettle.

These are mere shadows

among the polystyrene and the beer cans;

their souls bartered for a token

at a slot machine, swaying

to the same songs their way

into another slurred twilight

as relentless as the roulette wheel spinning

beneath a star-consuming crystal dome.

A neon cowboy tips his monstrous stetson

nodding eternal affirmation

of a promise repeatedly broken.