miles from any garage, dust plume settling on the seat,
on your clothes, on your eyelashes, while you waited for your new      husband

to return with water enough to get us to Ely in time,
must have been like waking up on the Plains of Armageddon

between forces of good and evil poised
to contest for your baby's soul

You kept praying for miracles, over and over striking
your Aaron's rod against red rock though no water came

no ravenous seagulls flocked over the hill
to devour the locusts

You always worried too much and lived too little
saving us from the truth, bearing up with a weak smile

when lost in nowhere surrounded by nothingness
when all around the spare sage-mottled hills

backed by imposing barriers of mountains
dark with piñon pine and deep ravines

the hard facts of daily life tested your faith
threatening to defeat any promise of another world

“After all I've been through,” you once said, “there'd better be a heaven
and I'd better not find any mansions or I'm gonna burn 'em all down

because if heaven is nothing more than a duplication
of what I've found on earth I'll be damned.”

When I finally stopped long enough to ponder heaven
I had to wonder why that vastness was so empty some nights

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