this chilly dawn.       It is time again
for me to go                  return back home
a thousand and one hundred miles.      I walk
down to the creek bed’s rocky ledges,

a bloom of water here and there among the peach
and ochre shale of the Chihuahuan desert.

I search for flowers, Gilia and blue Lupine,
Indian Paintbrush and Globe Mallow.

Back at his empty cabin       built of stone
I place them on the iron stove,          its fire
we did not need       to rouse us
                       in the cold and luminous desert nights.

Gudrun Bortman grew up in Hamburg, Germany and moved to the US in her twenties. She is an artist, a garden designer and a poet. An avid reader, journal and letter writer all her life, love of language led her to poetry. Her poems have been published in Sukoon Literary Magazine, San Pedro River Review and several anthologies published by Gunpowder Press. She lives in Santa Barbara, Califonia.