The Desert at Evening

For Night comes swift on the desert
Like the swoop of a carrion bird
Changing a blazing Inferno
To a Void where each sound is heard:
Echoing as in a darkened vault
The mournful howl of the coyote dim
From somewhere out on the desert rim
Seems to voice the soul of the desert right
A Wilderness pitiless in its stark might
Without any compensating charm
A world of dim silences, dust and storm
Where Nature has Man at an awful loss
And One who goes there, goes as One who'd toss
With his life as the stake on the coin's fall.

—J.A.C.