Dirt road

​There’s something about a dirt road 
leading you-don’t-know-where
that rises in your chest like an incantation.
The seconds throb in your throat,
patient and panting, keeping time with the ocotillo
rising and falling to the left 
and the right in the evening sun.  

I become the howl of dust rising in fire light,
the stomp, stomp, stomp of bare feet
and molten lava stars dripping from the sky.

I’m trying to say that I meant what I said 
when I shouted drunken poetry into the night. 
The echo returned to me wild,
threaded with hope, sounding exactly
like home.