I Lived High Summer on Those Chaparrals – Sonnet Sixty-One

I lived high summer on those chaparrals,
With country music, beer, and leather work.
In downing sun of coy-otes’ casting spells
Of life less lived, the concrete stall berserks.

In Joshuas and prairie sage consoles,
Of hoofs that slowly pick their mountain sides,
The dust and scrub in lonely fence patrols,
Where purpose and my lonely God reside.

How far and near that other self still haunts,
That peopled place I never knew as home,
That land of stolen dreams and nonchalance,
That bled my soul to exile desert roam.

I lived high summer on those chaparrals
In downing sun of coy-otes casting spells.