“I can’t wait until the women are in charge.” – Leonard Cohen

hundred four degrees out
a prostrate man
maybe not alive
barren desert
a featureless shack
quarter mile away

she bid me stop the rental car
she was better at it than me
being human

get away from here I thought
but she went out to him
cautious
but with reverent feminine force

copper face sun-bleached ground
straggly black strands
deeply etched wrinkles
torn shirt
almost no longer here

the lady in the shack
astounded that we knocked
at first
she asked if he seemed breathing
and filled us in
pay stipends this time of month
nothing to do
but alcohol

strangely, this was America
most males had my instincts
many females have hers though

I can’t wait
till the women are in charge

_______RS

[ Image : Google Maps close-up of the Tohono O’Odham reservation just east of Organ Pipes National Monument in the extreme south of Arizona. Organ Pipes used to be Tohono homelands. So did hundreds of square miles in the U.S. and in Mexico. When the border was ‘made’ 160 years ago, the inhabitants were dumbfounded that someone claimed they could no longer easily visit relatives or go hunting at will. Gu Vo is a place there, where I visited in the 1980s, and at the time tribal life seemed drastically limited, to say the least. ]

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