Montezuma’s Well
Rimrock, AZ
This sinkhole glistens with a green-gold surface,
edged with muskrat dens, mud turtles, cliffside
ruins. Sweet flag, sedge, and lurching cattails
soften its cragged rim. Datura furl
these fickle days of fall. The cacti lattice
where eyes have fastened on each solid thing
blurred with current. Water rollicks earthward
in the swallet. Sycamores, old giants, mackle
shadows. Slick spiderwebs have scribbled over
cavate limestone thick with root-hairs. Flow
spits in the narrow chutes Sinagua built
to irrigate the spare surrounding desert.
The water carries traces of arsenic,
which may explain the village’s demise.
I face red hillsides of the dry Sonora.
Darkened cloud-forms slowly texture morning
until a fogbound rainstorm holds the valley.
Rare day when droplets tally on the river,
I trek past graythorn, juniper, and wolf-
berry. Far cuestas stir with copper luster.
Air’s bouquet of sweet-acerbic creosote
floats up. The water scribes against each
inch of restless sediment and crust. If it has
any moment or meaning, it strives to keep
amending. Eroding. So much splendid dust.
Will Cordeiro has work appearing or forthcoming in Agni, Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Will’s collection Trap Street won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award, forthcoming in 2020. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.