Poems by Dale Cottingham

The Abandoned City (Mesa Verde)

by Dale Cottingham

From Canary Fall 2023

Dale lives in the Red River watershed in the southern plains of the U.S.

Already I wish I had better news,
the silence eliding my words
where at the end of their trace
what verve they possess
disperses
in some dark crevice.
I might die tonight
but just now I’m more troubled
by these rooms
linked as in an apartment block,
abandoned by those who ghost this place,
a window here, a door there
well within the wall,
a tell that they too
lived in fear.
These stacked stones
remain like signs:
a gambit it seems taken
by all those who walk earth.
Don’t we all carry a hunger
neon-shot, tongue lashed
into Ginsberg’s naked streets,
looking for a fix.
I admit
I lack courage to resolve myself.
Why else do these useless hands
rest at my side
while in great cities, little burgs,
my culture displays itself

on wide avenues,
self, the moral of where I live.
The silence I face
coalesces into a retort,
pulls me
to glimpse a new grammar
our progeny will use
to riff their critique of us,
that we did not consider the mess we leave,
that we were self-possessed:
across the land
I feel restless consciousness,
walking from being to nonbeing.
No different than the fading shadow
painting my face,
a harbinger of
harsher seasons to come.