The Desert
For miles beyond,
the shimmering salt flats
cruelly tease the eye into seeing
a vast body of water, when it
is only water's ghost, a skim on
thick mineral and salt deposits from an ancient lake with no outlet.
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The Ocean
Waves arch their massive backs, heaving themselves
against the granite rocks.
Because the Continental Shelf drops so abruptly to deep
ocean here, their thunder is penetrating, sudden.
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The
Prairie
The mid and tall grass prairie is fast- action animation, miming the
wind's every movement.
Grasses tease the wind
out of the air.
A field moves as one being, rattling, waving,
making serpentine shapes, shimmying,as it is whipped and combed by wind. |
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The Canyon
The canyon is chockablock
with shadows
that shift with the moment.
Next comes the sundowner wind.
Red rock is painted with
deep purple hues,
and wind-whipped
swallows and bats play
Chutes and Ladders.
Then, darkness.
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The Mountain
It catches
the brunt of
Pacific storms,
drawing weather to itself
like a magnet,
churning it into snow,
and in the summer,
spilling millions of gallons
of crystalline water down its sides.
The Sacramento, McCloud
and Shasta rivers are
all born on this mountain
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The Dune
Occasionally a storm blows
in from the northeast
and the shapely
transverse ridges
roll back on themselves
like a French seam.
This type of dune, its crests
sashaying atop the ridge line,
are so reminiscent of
the Great Wall of China,
it is called a Chinese wall.
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