Camouflage

Dusty July fence-post shade, Horned Toads copulating—scale and claw interlocked. She, twice his size, pancake belly waiting to knit calcium into white leather. Twitch, swish, a flash of pink—still—hunker down big sharp beak flying over. An A-10 wing takes off from Davis Monthan Air Force Base, laboring over my yard in twos and threes. My house, just four miles north of the runway—I hear them coming even before they are airborne. Every day, all day, all night, until they go to the other desert. One hundred and eighteen degrees, JP-8 purged before an emergency landing. Ants build volcanic cones, bringing grain after grain of gravel to the surface, and sometimes the redness of a garnet among the granules of sand. Sunset, licking ants from their eyes, studded backs melting into desert camouflage.


A-10s rumble over--
the dull, red splatter
of anthill garnets


Autumn Moon