New Mexican Standoff

 A love poem from one cowboy to another.

New Mexican Standoff

I am enraptured by you.

I oughta take that turquoise rib from your innards and lick it clean, boy, 

ought to take your sweetgrass hair in my hand and draw it along my belt.

you have a kind of power that is beyond me,

something I haven’t seen before, 

something I can’t seem to shake,

something I need to hold in my hands and know its mine,

you’re something I’ve got to have.

My boots are dug deep into the dirt like roots of a joshua,

The spurs of my heels carved from the marrow of your tender bone

you’re standing there in front of me, the sun just behind your head and in that moment

you are no man.

What you are,

what you manage to be

is the stability of the ground beneath our feet

and the omnipresence of the sky above our heads and

the sharpness of the wind slicing through the veins in my wrist

you’re broad, fulfilled,

in front of you I feel unfinished,

there’s a light within me that’s been waiting for another to uncover it,

a crack in my skull that’s been waiting for you to pry it open.

Allow the incandescence to bleed from my head,

Feel the heat, let me be known by you.

Grant me the opportunity to be seen

finish me off.