Why on Earth

did you leave Tucson?
they’ll ask,
and I usually say
it was just time.

Really, though,
it’s just a long story
I save for those who
care to understand.
You see, I had to

ditch that bright, beautiful spot,
where cactus-dirt crept between my bare toes,
every grain of rock whispering of eons;
eons we humans will never have.

Then one day,
Once upon a rock,
someone
told me that we do.
Have eons, I mean.

One day,
we’ll crumble down, too,
sand sifting off the stone,
we go so damn quick
back to the rock.

Remember that one scorcher in May
when we spread ashes on Mount Wasson,
when we returned you to the rock?
Some dust blew across the city to the Catalinas.

To Pima Canyon,
where, even now,
you sing of coulee and rock:
the wind flaring up yellow
behind the elms, your song.

It’s quite a story you tell.
Perhaps you can see
why, when they ask,
I usually just say that
it was time.