Moonlight On My Machine

Painted ships upon a painted desert.
Ah, that’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,
Sherman told the cicada girl

who was hanging on his arm.
The past, whatever past
they had ventured into, twirled.

Sometimes the machine
was way too precise.
The cicada girl was wearing the same jeans

she had worn to Papalote
the very first time she made
chicano history.

Sherman kicked the Gobi desert sand
from his cowboy hat
and balanced sand grains

one on top of the other
until they made a stairway to heaven---
the cicada girl’s eyes

reflected the stairway.
Her smile imprisoned Sherman
like a poem imprisons poets.

The Guadalupe River flowed,
the water molecules were made of brick.
Ain’t no use being a fish in here---

Mr. Bones threw away his gills.
He watched the lovers walk along
the bank

until they disappeared around
the bend of the river hand in hand.
The sun broke in half.

Sherman cranked on the machine
and they were back in the present,
the Waybac machine lit up by moonlight.