I had to come empty enough
For all this open sky
The iron earth
Singing its reds
Like an echo of my own
Blood music
I had to find room
For silence
For a new equilibrium
Between stone and sky
Where my chain of years
Weighs nothing
And I walk lightly
In the shadow of
Red desert dreams

—
Mary McCarthy has been a writer, an artist, and a Registered Nurse. She has had work published in many online and print journals and has an electronic chapbook Things I Was Told Not to Think About available for free download from Praxis Magazine online.