Mystic Desert (A Poem)

By Joyce Jacobo

[Author’s Note: Based on research I’ve done into the folklore from around my hometown.]

I know a desert land where spectral stagecoaches rumble through the night

     never to reach ladies dressed in wedding gowns who forever pace well-worn stations

             desperate to reunite with distant lovers

                            White horses once owned by bandits

                                    now run wild and free among hills

                                            in which ill-gained bounties

                                                   have been hidden for more than a century

                  Small flames flit

                                                 around certain mountains

                            while skeletons with lanterns in their ribcages wander

                                  in constant search for treasure-leaden mines

                                                            lost to time

        Coyotes yowl beneath the full moon inhabited by a kind goddess

                and in the summer               greedy spirits dance

                           about an old well in happiness

                                                                                     at riches they cannot touch

          Owls guide gentle souls to their eternal slumber

                safe from a malicious being known for thunderstorms and meteors

                        exiled to a mountain peak by the ancestors of a people

                               whose descendants still inhabit the land

To passersby in the day             

                                              it is a sleepy place

                  quiet and remote

But to those who know

          even a few of its many stories

                the desert reveals its magic

                         and grows in strength

                              much like the Santa Ana Winds

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