This is what the desert surrenders : new and selected poems / Shaun T. Griffin ; foreword by Tom Meschery.

New poems: My sons who have no opera to console them
Letter from the Hood River Shallows
Reading Jeffers in the rainy January dawn
Leaving hunger in the American West
Rain outside Lovelock, late March
The meth addict out my window
A leaf at the Board of Pardons
When Jake came wheezing to the door
The fallen season
Letter to Ken in farthest Logan
Stacking wood in heavy snow, days before Christmas
Daffodils one Sunday before snow
Running to Southern California
What they cannot say before dark
On the terraza
Every day she comes to Spain
Los Vendedores
Hunting for rain
September light
Heron dance
Now I sit the saddle to freedom
Palliative
What the flower might say to family
Sunflower ridge
When a poem drew its breath
in the late autumn of a Friday at work
Letter to my wife from the coastal plain
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

From Snowmelt: Snowmelt
All the worthwhile things
On Highway 50
A place of stone
On the San Francisco Zephyr
In a sparse tone
Thien Hong
Woman empty
In December steam
While stones rage
The contours of travel
Face of light
Social work
portrait of a lady
Baja California Sur
Father's coral heart
To my son
Married student housing
Watch him walk
If you are unable.

From Bathing in the river of ashes: After lunch at the Blueberry Cafe: Las Vegas, 1994
Hawthorne
The Meyer Cabin, Jarbridge
At the Old Santa Fe Club in Goldfield
Nevada no longer
On the death of the culture dog
Nevada's last bookstore
First cast, late December, Pyramid Lake
Magpie funeral
They go gathering pine nuts
First and last things
La Desterrada
Un moreno en la cocina
A brown man in the kitchen
This is not love's offering
"Seems I'm all I've got anymore"
Madonna in traffic
Visiting day
The Somali cab driver tells of ethnic cleansing
Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C.
At the river's edge
black english vernacular
Until they come home
Those people
Bathing in the river of ashes.

From Winter in pediatrics: It was not blame
Mosquitoes
Rooms
In the tent of miracles
Driving to the forest after work
Without adolescence
The heart donor
The unwanted cowboy
Watch him disappear
The iris ballet
The record of hands
Witness to questions
Sister to the vine
Last night we were told war is imminent
After surgery
Programmer
Survivor
Father to an imaginary grandson
Lunch with the Trabajadoras
In the chaplain's shadow
How she works
Song for Wilena.

From Woodsmoke, wind, and the peregrine: First light, Collioure
The blue heron at first light
The last songbird on Malta
Resurrection
Hummingbird
Ode to Carmen's chickens
Red-tail in a snow field
Ezra's crow
The goldfinches at mid-morning
When the Buttons leave for school
The snowy egret slough
Releasing sparrows at the Buddhist temple
Emerald Lake
Postcard to Wally easterly from here
in the loneliest town on highway
Waking from the charcoal dark
The loons on Walker Lake
The Grey Elliot Riff
City of gray
Tanager
On the porch
Late harvest without moon
The ornithologist's prayer.