Tuscarora

A poem for a desert artist...

Weed Street, Tuscarora #2, 1998 by Lee Deffebach. Courtesy of David Dee Fine Arts.

Tuscarora

Weed Street begins and ends at the saloon.			
Twenty-five locals survive winter				      
but the population swells to fifty				
in summer when the potters come.				
Lee lives there then in her wooden boxcar
to paint canvases of long roads leading nowhere
and to smudge her urban life
with the smell of sage.
Rain lulls her to sleep
she bathes in its silkiness
in a tub outside.
From her three-walled outhouse
she watches the sunrise
and the shape of the old Basque
hiking to his sheep camp across the ravine.
Later a wrangler rides by
toward the hills to check his herd
and a line of traps that carry him
through leaner days.
“Howdy ma’am, gonna be a right nice day”
He tips his hat and spurs his roan along,
his gear clattering in the distance.
Lee’s cats present their midnight catch 
spread across the threshold as tribute
then they crunch the rodents down
and crawl inside the bedroll,
still warm and smelling of Lee.
A long thought over coffee
then a skinny-dip in the Glory Hole
a bottomless reminder of a mine disaster.
She soaks each day in its watery balm 
a desert baptism to cleanse divorce’s grime.
Full moon dances on black velvet ripples
as she floats, gazes at possibilities
in shooting stars and planets,
She listens to rowdies in the bar
playing a drunken game of Amoeba,
their songs competing with coyotes in the hills.
There are lots of ghosts in Tuscarora
some of them still alive and hobbling about
too stubborn to retreat to the ‘big city’
	of Elko or Winnemucca
Lee and the potters all must leave 
at summer’s end
and wintry Tuscarora returns
to a whisper upon the hill.

---

Two years ago, Juke published Sue Cauhape’s story about the artist Lee Deffenbach and her visit to Lee’s boxcar retreat in the desert. It’s an evocative piece, exploring both the allure of the artist’s unconventional life, and also the draw of the endless desert landscape.

You can check it out here…

---

You can read more from Sue Cauhape on her page, “Ring Around the Basin”:

---

If you enjoyed this post, hit the ♡ to let us know.

If it gave you any thoughts, please leave a comment.

If you think others would enjoy it, hit re-stack or share:

If you’d like to read more:

And if you’d like to help create more Juke, upgrade to a paid subscription (same button above). Otherwise, you can always help with a one-time donation via Paypal or Venmo.