Little Cottonwood

Last night, in a high canyon, I watched the sun set.

This mouth of the earth opened wide, jaws distended,

As though it wished to swallow the sky’s amber hues whole.

The void like conifer silhouettes on ridges

Looked all the world like the barbed obsidian teeth

of an ancient serpent’s twisted mandible, gaping.

And as that burning chariot lowered slowly

the serpent drank the autumn twilight afterglow,

And next fixed its eyes, that I was too small to see,

on the moon coming into its ravenous view.

It devoured them all

Body after body.

Again and again,

Evening unto evening

No belly ever full, no horizon picked clean

A lost descendant of that long gone god killer

An ouroboros of flora, fauna, and sky.