Silences only the wind dare speak

The Middle Nights

We crossed the vast Nevadan empty
filling it with our own—the broken
backs of hours left strewn across
silences only the wind dare speak.

There were small enclaves, towns no
bigger than the few grains of sand it
took to mark them as a small dot on the
map. We passed among unseen beings,

heard God’s almighty jets tear blue from
trembling desert skies, wandered like Jews
through great plentitudes of nothing. Black
roads pulled horizons together by stretching



themselves like vipers of asphalt, spacing
them out one after another. Aimless strands
of cattle crossed ribbons of shimmered rain
that pooled in mirages of unkept promise.

Into this we went, realmless and raw,
ferrying the fleshes we made anew in a
silver hurtling through vacant desolation
on our way to Rachel and Lee Vining.

We would stop to see a saucer snagged
by a tow truck and the tourist sign for
UFO Self Parking. The Little A'le'inn
would be closed that day and it would be



perfect, our being all alone there, for the half
hour we were. Gasoline was three complainable
bucks a gallon, but necessity ensured our coursing
through this infertile quadrant of bleak lack.

I think of these things, this time with you,
here in the middle nights of my life,
when I cannot sleep and the immensity
of solitude presses down in a relentless

weighing of everything such enormity
cannot grasp. Depthless pools of broken
water no promise can raise to rain; these rich
visions that hold us thirsting and dearly there.

Joseph Gallo
October 26, 2007