Ghost Ranch, by Jane Frank

My Backyard, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) 1937.

Ghost Ranch
​
 
North of Santa Fe the cliffs throb
in their sky vault, crevices –
sultry pink – listen:
 
There’s a slow reverberation of ancient
coral beds where the sage-green
plains extend like a sea
 
My dark mesa is impenetrable but
the red sand tempts, swells.
Bones slice desert’s back
 
In peridot light and purple asters
sprout from skull-eyes, forever
sprinkled sight, footprints
 
Hidden in the soft arcs of Rito del Yeso --
a stream of paint wefting into
Chama River blue-cloth
 
I fertilise the yellow cottontree trail
markers, the meeting places, am
the catkins of early spring
 
Come inside my jacal house: smooth
your judgments on the bleached
antlers over my hive-fire
 
Of pinon logs. Speak in a soft voice –
to the ripe ghosts – mine, and
the woman with child
 
Who dances in dust past the glass.
Everything I need is still here: the
Cerro Pedernal a reward
 
For devotion under cloudless skies,
Monteverdi’s Magnificat
playing in the canyons

Jane Frank

Jane Frank teaches creative writing and literary studies at Griffith University in south east Queensland, and has qualifications in art history. Her poetry has appeared most recently inNot Very Quiet, Stilts Journal and The Poets’ Republic. It is also forthcoming in Antipodes, Meniscus and anthologies titled Pale Fire: New Writing on the Moon (The Frogmore Press 2019) in celebration of fifty years since the moon landing, and Forty Voices Strong: An Anthology of Contemporary Scottish Poetry (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 2019). Find more of her work at https://janefrankpoetry.wordpress.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/JaneFrankPoet/