Airlifted

At 5,200 feet, up a dusty, rocky footpath,

the truck named in the trailhead sign

two miles below—Dead Truck Canyon.

The passenger side door swung open

as though someone stepped out a minute ago

for an armful of Arrowleaf Balsamroot.

Just the rusty cab, nestled against a boulder,

It’s May. What good is an explanation?

Mystery is erupting all over the high desert—

last week pink, this week yellow.

We like the little gap between the teeth

of the indisputable. We just do.

We get a charge out of chasing down

the punchline. Airlifted in by helicopter?

Carried up piece by piece, reassembled?

When we were children, didn’t we wear

our parents out with Why? When? How?

Didn’t we exhaust them with our appetite

for the sky’s blue? The water’s music?

The shadows in the face of the moon?

Kathy Nelson, recipient of the James Dickey Prize, MFA graduate of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, and Nevada Arts Council Fellow, is author of The Ledger of Mistakes (Terrapin Books) and two previous chapbooks. Her work appears in About Place, Five Points, New Ohio Review, Pedestal Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily and elsewhere. Visit her at kathynelsonpoet.com.