Nothing is everything
-
Shadows on rock
Russell Hepworth -
book cover of "Antique Land"
-
A wind mill in the desert
Russell Hepworth -
Skies over Nevada
Russell Hepworth
Imagine some tan grass and sage,
monoliths and blow outs,
flatness the feet cannot believe,
distance the eye laughs at
as it fumbles blindly
with the ends of all time.
Imagine everything here moves
(even the cactus will come close
to a sleeping man
and the beetle will tunnel
under the arch of his foot)
and a full half-moon
is enough light for gray things.
Here our secret voice is too loud.
When we think, the desert hushes ...
so quiet jack rabbits can hear
owls listening with one ear ...
so quiet when a vulture beckons
with the bones of our hand
our shadow makes a dragging sound
like dry skin over rock.
Inside our selves, there is nothing
anyone can say to us.
We learn to hear a voice
with no sound, with no tongue
with no mouth, as if the air
itself was a way of speaking.
We have become easily startled
because we are living
in the space closest to our bodies.
William Studebaker and Russell Hepworth are longtime residents and students of the dry, cool regions of Utah, Idaho, Oregon and Nevada. In Travelers in an Antique Land, Studebaker's spare poetry and Hepworth's black-and-white photographs reveal places that most people see only from their car windows. Their emotional responses to the land transcend politics; their craftsmanship leaves readers with an understanding of the high desert, from Bliss, Idaho, to Death, Nev. Travelers in an Antique Land is for those who wish to hold this part of the world in their hands and minds.
University of Idaho Press, Moscow, ID 83844-1107 (1-800/UIPress). 81 pages, hardback with black-and-white photographs. $49.95
" John Sollers
DRINKING FROM A CATTLE TROUGH
You do this because
it is the only water
because your tongue
has thickened from breathing
because the desert taunted you
and kicked heat down your throat
until you choked.
With both hands
you part the green scum.
You are no Moses
but the clear water below
is a miracle for which
you would risk everything.
Between drinks you watch
mosquito larvae
flip and jerk up and down.
Your last drink is quick
*ot as deep as the first.
THE SKIES OVER NEVADA
Whoever said you can't
learn by studying nothing
wasn't a philosopher
or a Nevadan.
In Nevada, nothing is
everything. We make do
with what we have "
even due north.
Most directions we travel
without. We've forgotten
how the constellations rotate
(things you probably think about
every day). Try as we do
tailing Hydra's too tough.
There's always dust
moving somewhere
and we have to check it out.
We know where we are
and there is plenty of room
to be here, too.
Consider the Humboldt Sink
bigger than the Copper Pit
(the world's largest Glory Hole)
or Esmeralda County
where a citizen can wander
bewildered all her life
looking for the Lost Dutchman.
When we lay our dreams
end to end, they don't reach
the horizon, and we've learned
to be content with just that
much less of everything.
