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THE DESERT RANCHER ON SUNDAY
by Jeffrey Alfier

Winds release clouds from the tread of drifting
but buoy the arcs of loitering hawks.
 
It’s so quiet he swears he hears sunlight,
Chihuahuan sage blossoming in clusters.
 
Where his footfalls impel a warbler’s flight,
distant church bells summon their own echoes.
 
He kneels, presses palms to parched tractor ruts
that angle off into wind-runneled fields.
 
Thin soil keeps him for another season,
the ground made of nothing his hands won’t hold.

…”The Desert Rancher on Sunday” appears in the Silver Birch Press release The Wolf Yearling, a collection of poems by Jeffrey C. Alfier, available at Amazon.com.