Hummingbird dawn. Unfinished fragments
of dreams with nowhere to land. The mountain
behind them cracks
a rocky smile. It’s calm now in the sky
where coyotes howled at midnight
and Eddy Arnold sang
from where music goes to be alone.
The volume keeps rising from Nashville to the news,
bright lights, guitars that scream,
another random shooting.
Sunrise isn’t what it used to be
when Marty Robbins took a good one
that looked like it could run
and raced it back to Rose’s for a goodbye kiss.
Spanish was the lovin’ tongue back when
she was Mex and he was white
before the border wall. Who remembers
the day that Marty died? It rained all night
in Glendale, Arizona, rained
El Paso rain, desert rain, rain crying like a slide guitar,
nostalgic rain in three quarter time,
rain weeping gunfire and birdsong.