This is my first serious attempt at writing in about a year or so. I'm looking for critique on it, as I personally like it. I want it to be a better piece than it currently is, please help!

Parched Earth: Dreams in the Desert

Divinorum

Darkness stretched out from us
across sky and empty lands of dust
it blanketed our known world
and we rushed across the desert
a blur of silver and tire tread worn thin
quiet conversations and quieter hopes
with only two headlights to guide us
I sensed a dream stirring within me
parched earth, forgotten bones
red dust, bleached fragments
cracked and drying under midday sun
a faded ghost asking me to call the rain
with my own sun-blistered lips

I could feel a storm growing inside of me
pressing against bones and sinew
ripping from my body and filling the firmament
the scent of rain lay heavy on the air
somewhere in the desert a coyote paces
uneasy and aware that a shaman traverses it's land
it knows that a storm is coming
for a dazed second I am within the animal
old and haggard with my head tilted to the storm
our mouths open and we howl as if moon mad
lightening forks angry across the clouds
and reflects within our eyes
the car swerves and I come back to myself

My heart palpitates as the sky rips open
rain falls in sheets and the ground sighs
beneath the parched ground roots curl
they shift and tremble and reach
they claw for promised moisture
I feel my burnt veins doing the same
my hand is white and bird boned
palm open and fingers unfurling
like a nightblooming desert flower
aglow almost prophetic with returning life

We speed across rain slickened roads
the only human beings for hundreds of miles
the lightening chases behind us
illuminating the droplets on the windshield
each one is a small shining star
falling upward and into the sky above us
returning to their rightful places
in the illumination I see ghosts
wild horses long dead and dusty
they streak across the violent horizon
their manes like white fire flying behind them
I can hear their hooves shaking the sky
thundering against the heavens
threatening to fall them with each deafening stride

The coyote lays down in the rain
it breathes it's last tired breath
and returns to the red clay from which it came
I feel it pressing into my chest
beyond bone and sinew and mind
the shaman and the vibrant trickster god
one and the same as they should have been
we fly through the sands
kicking up dust and tumbleweeds in our wake

The horses thunder and ignite the firmament
and we howl and run along side them
reaching for the edges of the storm
I feel alive, predatorial
the storm has shaken me
the night has moved me
darkness quakes around us
as we thunder against an eastern wind
the storm behind us has fallen away
the horses have taken on a morning glow
morning's first rays have set them aflame

And we run and howl and bite at their flanks
all of us connected and pulsing
ghost, human, animal, and stormcaller
snarling, alive and chasing down the dawn.

A vision prophetic. My vision, and I will never be the same.

M. K. Lord