Giants’ Faces Held in the Hills

Late morning we occupy the space of our shadowsescorted each week through the yard of small white stones,of whale-blue buildings named Palo Verde, Cactus, Kennedy,Roosevelt, and the two spruce trees called sentries.

Neither inmate nor correctional officer,I am between their words and the invisible womenthat occupy workshop with descriptions of their hairlike water from a dry spring. My co-instructor and I,

we are new statues. We are pinstriped cotton shirtsand blue pants. We are slender fish between the gates. Weare our family’s names beside students also fathers, alsohusbands, also sons, also inmates in their orange reminders.

Here they say, we are not cyclopses. Thank you for not staring.We talk about Bishop’s fish returning to the waterwith its hooked gums, about Pound’s apparitions.It seems this prison is also a world beneath worlds.

Its residents speak to the outside from booths beneath sentries.On ceremony, some gather in the sweat lodge gated under sun.And I see none of this until a morning when the yardis clear of orange, when we look past our shadows and theirs.

At its finish, they say, drive safe. We exit the yard.Exit sally port, returning our radios. Exit door and outer gate untilthe desert is un-netted from barbs and chain link. Until next time,we return to giants’ faces held in profile against the dark hills.