i drove up the angel’s highway the night i went to watch the sky fall

 

passing

abandoned cars and camper vans and parked a ways

away

from the clinking glasses and champagne laugh bubbling from

the tinted windows of a bmw.

 

i stood on the edge of the canyon

turned my eyes to the lion and let the bitter wind

eat me alive.

 

but

i saw no stars in the thinning air.

just a fat moon burnt orange by the western blaze

and

clouds of smoke built from

dreams

of men and women asleep in

parking lots.

 

and beneath my wings i saw

the city lights struggling to breathe to the rhythm of the

thunder of thousands of distant freeway trucks, so many and so faint that i thought

the ocean lived between their wheels.

 

i think

the second most beautiful thing i saw up there was the

ghost of a hanging tree

growing out of a boulder that cracked beneath its own weight.

 

the most beautiful thing i saw on the angel’s highway,

of course,

was

 

you.