Back when I thought I was going to be a poet, I submitted some poems for a critique. One of the poems was titled “Deserts Always Win” – I’d written it after a drive through the deserts around Victorville, California, where I saw lots and lots of remnants of things that hadn’t worked out – homes, businesses, dreams. And – unlike places with heavy vegetation – plants didn’t grown up over the left-overs, so the defeat was always in clear view of anyone who bothered to look. Apparently, the person who critiqued my work had not ever been to a desert; they took very strong exception to my title and to the premise of the poem.

I’m not saying that unfavorable critique led directly to my becoming a photography. I am also not saying that it didn’t play a part…

Anyway, here’s a hulking ruin in eastern New Mexico; it appears to my photographic eye that once again, the desert was victorious. (Poetic me still stands by that, too.)

Chaves County, New Mexico
photographed 5.23.2021