New Mexico

We drive out to the petroglyphs
and lay an air mattress and a blanket in the pickup bed
where we lie and watch
the descending stars
whenever our eyes are not closed
and we are not turned away from the sky.

I mention that I’m surprised that it’s cold enough
that the blanket matters. Also, I say that
loving you feels different here.
You say in New Mexico, it’s the heat,
not the humidity.

One streak lights us up
when it burns through the thin clouds.
I imagine it striking down
somewhere out toward Tucumcari, raising dust
and a rumble you could hear all the way to Dallas.

If it were day, you tell me,
we could climb up and see the writing on the rocks.
We could stay all night, I tell you.
We could get caught, you tell me.
We could, I say,

but we could plead the influence
of the stars, say that they fell on us
and burned us nude so we had to wrap ourselves
in each other and when the explosion came
we were so stunned we had to wait until dawn
to read the rocks and understand what it all meant —

Shut up, you say. And I do.