#gmraines

And corporations have yet to exploit.

Why does American progress always begin with a bulldozer?

Why does love always die on a backroad?

I reread your last message reminding me to stick to the familiar road and always stare up at the moon.

You were the only other who loved the moon as I did.

Always reminding me of its rising in all of its ethereal stages.

But the familiar roads were not the ones that saved me.

g.m. Raines

Right in my eye.

Sweat on my cheek.

My hair wild.

You said it was perfect.

If the dead can dream, I wonder if you sometimes dream of that night.

Where nothing but the new moon was our common companion.

Sometimes I wake up in that field by that back road where the dust never settles.

My research attempts failing me again.

The early sun always shining too deliberately.

I swear the four wheelers have tripled.

You would have hated that.

I crack open a can of coffee and set to work.

My research was always different from yours.

You researched life.

I researched grief.

Ever curious how much sadness the human heart can carry before it gives out.

How I never realized how deeply your own griefs had settled.

So I carry on alone in the desert, observing and watching.

I write and I wonder if any of it adds up in the end.

And how I wish I had one more chance to argue about the the difference between corvids.

How the crows still follow me.

And the ravens still taunt me.

How my heart will never quite settle.

g.m. Raines

“We’re on the edge of the solstice.

Yet it still feels like the fickle spring.

There’s a thread of eeriness in the air.

It’s soft and insistent in its temperate warning.

The skies are too bright and the air is too dry.

The water is shallow and stagnant.

Yet still they keep flocking - RV’s, boats and third and fourth homes.

Tearing up the delicate desert.

Tossing in pools, grass and palm trees.

So desperate to recreate their old home.

They talk of a lack of assimilation - never addressing their own.

They ask me again how I like it here.

How lucky I am to reside amidst towering cliffs, ancient fossils and precious sage.

I tell them my rent is past due.

And I fear I’ll never again own my own home.

But at least the moon is my companion.

I can still see the stars.

And the lizards and scorpions listen when I let them.

And now they’re asking me about scorpions.

And if I know anyone who does pest control.”