pioneertown.

I’m fresh out of tumbleweeds,
though Saturday when you left
I high-tailed it to the ghost town
in your nightmares: the place that
skirted your fears, left you sweaty,
though I said it was like Bonanza
and we’d ride in together like
Hoss and Little Joe and hitch
our ponies to the rail outside
the Silver Dollar Saloon while
Roy Coffee cornered the bad guys and
Pa waited for us back on the ranch.
You got mad that morning, said
“you make too much fun of it all,”
but what is life if not to sneer
at our nightmares?

That Saturday I found ghosts
in that dusty, empty Main Street,
parked beside the Desert Hawk Hotel
and counted tumbleweeds
large as my Volkswagen blowing
through, skipping on undercurrents,
heading onward.