Ballad of the Watchers Watching

"The Ballad of the Watchers Watching" is one of four in a series called Desert Ballads.

When Federico Garcia Lorca wrote his famous series of poems, Gypsy Ballads, he was dancing on the edge of narrative decaying into lyric, or of lyric imagining narrative. As his close friend Salvador Dali said about one of Lorca's ballads, "You think there's a story there, but there isn't."

This was the spark for my series, Desert Ballads. I'm submitting "The Ballad of the Watchers Watching," which is one of four that form a series which will be a small book soon.

I live in a town of 500 people in the high desert of north-central Oregon surrounded by wheat and cattle ranches.

Who are the two men descending the canyon? What are they seeing? And why? Who else is watching? Why is the girl crying? And why would anyone give a fuck?

Yep, those are some of my questions. I have others, but I won't bore you.