Van Gogh Drinks PBR on the Paria Plateau at Sunset

Sunburned, leaning on the pickup’s hood, his eyes ripping up
the stone’s red surface, the sharp horizon line.

He searches his pockets, says he has something
to send to the night-black raven which just dove

into the canyon. Finding nothing, picks up a rock
and hurls it after the bird. Light never catches up to light,

he says, then tilts his head back, gets the last piss-drop
of gold onto his tongue, and stops and stares.

Navajo Mountain over there, beyond the lake’s open eye.
Grand Staircase to the north. This desolation

of stone and piñon trees, dead cows and sky.
He fingers his ear. Wants to call some woman.

I tell him it’s three hours to a phone. Tells me
to fuck off and stalks to the back of the truck

to get another beer. Remembering the way the sun
stripped everything from the land at noon but shadow

and how he stripped naked to be more like that lake,
collecting in the sky. The way he says that eyes work.

Later I find him staring over the canyon’s rim,
down to the stream’s distant tongue of stars. Says

That’s the texture of death. That’s what that hawk
sees in wind. Talks for hours about the way sand lifts off

the canyon’s walls, like a brush rising from a canvas,
and how he wants to just lie down here, among

these toadstool rocks, the sage and wind-black junipers,
though he’s afraid of being swallowed in at dawn,

says he knows that he’ll be washed, chased down
into this porous rock by the freakish rain of light and sky.