DESERT MIRAGE

DESERT MIRAGE

An old dirt road, and a new jeep.
She felt a wild sense of freedom
when she struck out overland
with her six-year-old son in tow.
She thought It must be right,
because the GPS said it was so.
But it's a technological illusion
that you can't get lost in the desert.
When her son died of heatstroke,
she discovered backroads led to nothing
but grief & the Funeral Mountains
were well named for their darkness,
and that glimmer of distant water she saw
was merely bent light slaking the eye.

4/5/2016




My poetry prompt was a newspaper article from 2009
Death by GPS' in desert