I carry my curiosity with me
It looks like a journal and pen

Out here in the desert,
I wonder,
as I walk alongside Joshua Trees and scattered boulders
What thoughts will arise?
What themes will present themselves?
What gentle pondering wants to be gently pondered?

I carry my curiosity with me

A speckled rock catches my eye
And the way the path meanders just so
I rise up a ridge to see a calico mountain reach from the sky
to the gulley below

I hear a helicopter’s whirring
and snatches caught on the breeze of fellow travelers

I listen
internally
as word rivers stream through me
amid this arid land
some rushing angry ones
some lazy summer-days-on-an-inner-tube ones

I carry my curiosity with me

noticing
noticing

sights
sounds
smells
touches
tastes

and the mind clouds that drift by

I sit on a rock
feel the hardness beneath me
and my hand

writing
writing

The words that come
don’t belong to me
anymore than that Joshu Tree,
that red sandstone rock

I am a traveler
walking this desert land
bumping into them

noticing
noticing

I carry my curiosity with me

(This poem also appears on Scribe publication in Medium  Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash)