twin desert rats 
driving to town 
in their old tin can—
white beards grazing 
their belt buckles 

tis the season 
for speeding 
hay trucks—
chaff falls 
by the roadside 

storm watch 
cloudy and colder—
passing on the right 
the swoop and cry 
of a peregrine 

Cynthia Anderson

has ten poetry books in print, most recently The Missing Peace (Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2021). Her poems frequently appear in journals and anthologies, including Spillway, Crab Creek Review, Apercus, Askew, San Pedro River Review, Mojave River Review, The Coil, and Split Rock Review, among others. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. In 2020, she took up short-form poetry and has been exploring haiku, senryu, cherita, and related forms.

Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens (Green Poet Press). She makes her home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park.

Author’s website: www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com