Larry D. Thomas on Right Hand Pointing

Way Out West

Bare, desolate, windswept,

raw, depressing, dreary,

and pale are the seven

interlocking pieces

of its picture puzzle

of bleakness. Its wind’s

a phantom, tireless whetter

grinding its denizens

against the whetstone

of the desert

to dust. Its plant

and animal lives,

what few are fully lived,

are caught in a susurrous

sonata of three movements: “Youth,”

“Doomed Love,” and “Dotage.”