Sedona Air and Light Create Holiness

Raven Calling from the Cliffs of the Gods

Nocturnes I Heard in Arizona

James Hart

Sometimes we live best
in arid zones of the soul
where light falls into the west,
the only water over-flowing bowls

of endless silver wind,
the only sound I hear
striking silent chords that end
somewhere never very near

until night fills us with
its swift wafered-waves
like a covenant with death,
ravens at rest on architraves

of monumental columned stone,
our faces pale as bread
as each of us walks alone
under black gods waiting to be fed.

Cathedral Rock - Sedona, Arizona

Somewhere West of Never

James Hart

You gaze out at landscape
where you see the failing light
filling canyons, stone shapes
hued with long coming of the night,

and you recall why stars roll
up from east and over
you, a shell of crystal soul,
obsidian ark of endless cover.

Here in time’s black tabernacle
light is both minister and minster,
all the aisles are always full,
and nothing from the stillness stirs

as you look up for signs of flight,
hoping a raven will now sever
itself from stone and starlight
somewhere over there, west of never.

(These two poems form the opening

and closing of an unpublished manuscript

entitled Somewhere West of Never)