Eremite Letter

So much land in America is waste by commercial standards,
like the ocean in its sparseness
bearing light.

 A motel, a cafe, a gas station
and a string of lights
strung out
communicate life.

 You do not hear dogs.

 You walk out in the sage and hear silence,
watch a small hawk turn,
precisely, as if tiptoe, on its wings;

 put your own foot down
in sand of a kind bland in color.

 Not a fence, no trees,

 only distance that mounts up like a fever,
fades away in heat
to perceptions that are false,
air that waivers;

 maybe see men mount
and ride over the gray edge of earth. 

It's no use to shout.

 There are poisons antivenins can't reach
that this land draws out.