Chariot Driven upon Dry Graves

Buds shiver against a reedy, brittle, brown stem
as a hoary, ice wind corrals damp, gray fingers
into mustang herds, unshod and trampling dusty,
back door trails that lead out of boxed canyons
and up the sheer cliffs of craggy mountain passes
carpeted by the soft, white sheets of powdered
snow that clings to the walls like static balloons.

Ancient wooly mammoth tusks scrape hollowed
out, petrified tree trunks on the icy sloped ridges
as their trumpet heralding calls still echo
through ageless nights where constellations still
slither across coal black skies like diamondbacks,
rattling warnings in rhythms only babies in cribs
decipher but ultimately lose the code's key
when language invades minds with simplified
brands of ambiguous meaning - begging cries.

Wiley geysers spout unfaithful jets of steam
and boiling liquid from the churning bowels
of gas-sick, earthen chambers, releasing
the parboiled, rocky flesh of screaming ocean
reefs, hundreds of years in the making, dying
as seductive actresses bat false eyelashes.

Fossilized, crystal geodes glitter iridescently
above the crowded Eurasian steppes, sacrificing
cultural immunity to the conversation god
of technology on the unwired, rippling auroras
fashioned by the solar wind as it rips Mother
Earth's plasma right out of the center of her
soul - as if a chariot driven upon dry graves.