I watched the Mojave sun perform its heat

     over the abandoned Evening Star Mine.

 

I trespassed rotting wire, dismissed the warning sign

     that fronted the shuttered opening: False floors,

 

timbers stippled with rot, rattlers, rockslides,

     or some injured animal, its raddled legs

 

folded over mineral dampness —

     all rumored to ambush from this labyrinth

 

worthy of any minotaur. My flashlight led the way

     but muddled itself dim — its beam gun-shy of blind tunnels. 

 

I gathered what may have been the last good sense I own,

     turned back toward the ravenous light of my trespass,

 

slipped on something jagged and brambling, and braced

     against a wooden beam. As I reentered daylight,

 

I recalled years back, lifting my father off his kitchen floor

     where he’d failed to balance himself on the frame

 

of my mother’s chair. I righted him,

     sat him at the table, my mind weighing his final wish

 

that would see him become ashes ghosting a Connecticut river

     whose name I’ve now forgotten.

 

My eyes scanned his patio beyond the kitchen window,

     its bricks dimmed to the red of famished flames,

 

still close enough, even now, to touch.