Thrill-seekers,
joy-riders, and those
who are lost come here
to turn around.

No one arrives on purpose
but the writers with their
laptops and little notebooks,

digging around, intruding
upon the squirrels,
the cardinals, the crows,
and the bullfrogs
of the valley.

Bottom-lands: soil rich
from the run-off of nutrients
down the mountains.
Everything of value slides
like the map on a Yaqui
man’s face.

He’s sure it was here,
as he digs this way and that,
breaking the earth with
his spade until he can’t
sink any lower, until he
is forced to say, "I must
have missed it. What I wanted
to show you…I thought…
it was right here."
And, according to the book of maps, it was.

There is no history
of the decline,
the gradual weeping downward, the slow
descent that misplaces
all we once were.