I.

Bones of earth rise at random

jagged, cracked and knobby 

or smooth, vast, curved.

They sink into fissures that delve 

deeper than Hades

spewing salt 

that cracks our heels, our lips, our hair

our hearts.

Spewing water hot with sulphur

its turquoise shocking against 

white red brown grey. 

–

Termas, they call them here

maybe from terminar

since the water is indeed at the finish line

nowhere left to go

no path to freedom 

just sucked into mist or sucked 

down, down to Hades 

leaving only a salted rim

on the rocks.

–

Speaking of margaritas, 

I constantly crave the acid of limón

squeeze it into my water

on my rice, my palta, my mango.

Everything here has spines

sour with sweet

nothing soft for hundreds of miles—

myself included.

II.

In the Valle del Muerte the kids climb

yet another precipice.

I watch from below, every muscle 

clenched

trying not to close my eyes when 

a small shoe

sends red crumbles falling.

I tell myself that the difference between

falling and flying

is simply perspective.

They go where I can’t follow

where I can’t save them

or marvel alongside them 

at their very own unfolding vista.

–

The sun beats on rainbow rocks

glitter amidst the grit

meteorites land here, stay preserved

iron-nickel, heavy hunks

bellies of asteroids 

wombs of planets-to-be

I sit amidst them

a magnet without my metal.

–

The kids bring me back gifts 

crystals and geodes

an oblong slice of see-through silica

glass made by fusing sand with heat.

I say, “Describe the Atacama Desert in three words.”

Talon says, “Dry dry dry.”

Lyra says, “Hot hot hot.”

–

We stuff stones in pockets 

scramble up a canyon with 

red walls carved by rain that is

measured in millimeters per century.

At 13,000 feet in the shade of a boulder 

we crunch on vinegar chips and apple chunks.

III.

Licancabur rules this desert.

A kid’s science-fair version of a volcano

it stretches to touch airplanes and stars

a place where snow never lasts

like a popsicle you just can’t 

eat fast enough.

–

If I squint a little

this place looks like Mars

or the moon

and I can see the whales who hovered

the saber-toothed tigers who prowled

the Inca who built roads and fortresses

through this colossal, barren, forlorn

but never forsaken

expanse of unimaginable desert.

–

People live here still

tourists flock, unload from vans

snap a selfie, retreat again

while locals smile with dust in their mouths

mud for walls, straw for roofs

searching still for falling stars.

IV.

This is the quietest place I’ve ever been.

No planes

No people

No cars

No creeks

No wind (until 5pm, when it blows like clockwork)

       Just sun.

At night the cracks in my heels, my lips, my hair

ricochet 

flesh crevassed with battle scars worth honoring.

–

We are bleached

Leached?

Washed clean

Just add water

Watch us grow.

V.

We drive for hours through the desert

not a living speck 

not a stick of green

breaks an endless sprawl of white and brown

except those vultures

who circle overhead.

We drive down, down

dropping thousands of feet 

on a road that is straight and narrow

and then through a gap in the rocky hills:

       Blue.

–

We run into the Pacific

gasp at the cold, the wet

the slippery grip of life underfoot.

I swim out

look back

and see the skeleton that lives beneath 

all my mountains:

California, Hawaii, Montana, Alaska.

Atacama is 

the beginning and the end

the substrate from which colors emerge

and the bones to which we all return.