A child is valuable in a car
to a crying woman
whose tears require
little response
like a low horizon filled
with mounding clouds
their suggestion of
somewhere else
capable of stirring longing
while teaching distance
so much is vapor
a high wind can shift
movement darkly insubstantial
above flat land where scrub
mesquite claws
the thing waited for
skin prickling under a cloud’s
cool and imperceptible
journeying, rain’s
concluding arrows