Desert Moon

A portrait of a cowboy circa 1870s by the painter Virgil Day. The cowboy rides a black horse with a fire red mane and a translucent glow illuminating its shape. The rider hangs low behind the head, almost becomes swallowed by the darkness in the night. His six shooter at his waist shines, the same tone as the moon.

The moon appears to be an eye for some great deity, sketched faintly and masked with clouds and colors in the sky. Or it could be a fire, maybe distant, seemingly close, like a mirage. Fowl ride either toward its light, or from its fire and almost appear as humans making camp for the night.

Virgil Day said that the man was based off a poem about an outlaw turned sheriff.

The man in the poem had killed four others, supposedly in self defense and was wanted for three years in seven states before a US Marshal handed him a badge.

In the poem, the narrator describes the cowboy as not knowing what he is running from, not knowing what he is looking for.

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Ancestors my grandfather told me about.

They traveled out west to California in 1840s, much like the cowboy in Virgil Day’s painting. They starved on their way out west, froze in the desert at night, nearly died of heat exhaustion in the daytime. Had biblical visions from the great gaze of the fire in the sky. Jubilee wrote in his journal, “Saw birds eating my eyeballs this morning. Sure it was not a dream. Haven’t ate in four days now. Dreamed we cooked up father last night for supper.”

In California, they struggled for eighteen months surviving, mining for gold. Finally in a place with the reputation similar to the phrase, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ they strike gold.

They were on tribal lands, which they agreed not to enter, and were scalped and drowned to death by the natives.

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A story about my first dog when it died.

They say it wanders into the wilderness when it is time to die. I searched for it high and low and between. Every day before and after school. I cried at night before I went to sleep.

I have a reoccurring dream at night sometimes about scathing the desert in the old days searching for my dog, like it is lost and crying somewhere for me. Like it ain’t dead, like it ain’t watching me, lost myself, under the pale moon, starving and cold.

I can still hear its soft bark, a yelp, see its shadow form under the moonlight waking me from my sleep.