Poems Pick the Locks People Make

There are no surveillance cameras here

On the black cliffs above the mesa, yet,

Although tourists sometimes report parked cars

To the park rangers for them to inspect.

I know this because I’ve been reported

Before, as suspicious, and I’ve been checked.

A little ways off the road, a few steps,

About how far my legs will let me get,

The basalt cobbles and boulders arrive

At the spot where lava stopped and then slept

For tens of thousands of years, long before

Anyone sat and savored its prospect.

Even in its summer heat, in this drought,

The mesa remains green, its sandstone red,

The high sky blue and utterly cloudless

Out to the next lava cliff in the west,

Behind which, from this perspective, sun sets

And winks—no surveillance cameras yet.