White Sands, NM

photo by Nick Nolte

It’s your Subaru, but I drive it.
Left hand lazy on the wheel, the other 
on your thigh. You’ve been searching the line 
where the sky meets horizon ever since we crept 
over top of that last mountain for something 
that looks like, but isn’t, snow. I have been promising you 
sand dunes all day, powdered white, spread
out around us like an alien ocean. Glowing pink 
and orange in the light of the sinking sun. I promised myself

that I wouldn’t disappoint you. I know
that my memory is not exactly reliable 
but more like an old magician’s hat – black-silk
and strange, prone to dropping unexpected objects:
handcuffs, dead doves, details. I should warn you
about the wind. About how the fine sand collects
between your toes, in your teeth, in all the folds
of your clothes. Instead I avow the existence 
of an incredible landscape, an American wonder, 
one I swear was here ten years ago.

How does one misplace an entire desert? 
The last sign said twenty miles but we must
have gone farther, the odometer clicking over, 
the gas light flipping on, arrow pointing to empty.
The flat, brown edges of this valley pull themselves
snugly up to distant mountains, unbroken
by even the faintest shift in color. I begin to wonder
if we have missed a turn, or if I have simply
manufactured a memory, invented an entire 
national park to impress you.

When we finally spot the first pale slope
by the side of the highway, your eyes grow 
so wide with delight it makes me wish
I’d had some hand in its creation after all.