Laughter Of An Old Magician Poem by David Kowalczyk

The desert never leaves you.
This graveyard rich with dust and
tears is like the imaginary friends
you cherished as a child, who are
waiting, still, for you to join them.


Like the aching eyes of famished
children, like saints breathing fire,
there is a hard purity to the desert.
Patience sculpted the desert.
'Leave it all for the lazy future, ' whisper
the roadrunners and the tumbleweed.


The desert is full of
shape-shifting eings.
You never know what
disguise they will take
next.