Conception
You
were made in the desert in a car with the windows down
About
an hour after sunset, as quiet as a mango pit
Save
the panting engine from a long drive in
Your
mother and I steaming. We had no idea it would work
It
was not supposed to be. In Death Valley, in a Volkswagen
In
an engulfing space, the lowest place on Earth
Hundred
and nineteen in the sun. Gas was four bucks, we gasped
Out
the windows, copulating in our petri dish under the vast
Dome
of sky, nothing but minimal specks by which to grasp
Not
like it’s supposed to be. We were afraid of the silence
You
know, those desert homicides, pickup with lights dimmed
Who
knew we’d create a storm called you
Those
days I thought the heart was more a muscle than an organ
How
it would grow in a sea of dad, landscape of petty and urge
Flashflooding
the highway, depositing love far and deep
At
night, if one is quiet, when the windows are wide
Still
a little fear. How irony, in its expansiveness
And
a little lust brought you here
There
is a tiny fish that lives only in Death Valley
Ironically,
created in a cave, in waters sparse and dank
Not
in the seas, but in California’s deep perdition
Listen
to your mother and I breathing you into being
This
is your pulse, your desert, all the water that you need
To
evolve in your own unlikely shallows