I am up much too early today

not to watch the sun rise

but because of some restlessness

some desire to move from

this one spot where the earth

 

is parched, where water

hides beneath the cracked earth.

The sheriff of Kenedy county

leads journalists on a trail

from the Rio Grande north

 

to a small highway. The tourist

spots are dry holes near scrub

mesquite, sand dunes with rattle

snakes. He points out each

depression in the earth, each

 

depression that once held dry

bones in a dry country. “Nine

people so far this year,” he says.

“Illegal aliens walking from

so many miles south to some

 

north they've never seen.” They

used to drown in the river, now

their skin shrivels as they walk,

turns darker, their tongues dry.

They lie down beneath dunes and die.

 

Here in this withered borderland

no oasis offers relief, no ranchers

put water out as they do food

for ranging cattle. I stand beneath

a bright night sky, looking up

 

at stars undimmed by city lights

and gaze across a barren land. I do

not see a woman fall, posed between

two dwarf trees, hear the rattle

of a snake, of a last breath of air,

 

only, some small cough, some

desire that floods across the border,

some search for life, to take and drink,

to kneel and stretch up and out. This

is the end, the last days of pilgrimage,

 

blisters on face and back, feet cracked

like patches of hard clay. Jose y Maria,

what child must come, what rescue

from a dry land, what hope for clear

water and the soft brush of cool breezes.