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To the Desert
I entered your strange places
on a storming Halloween night.
You were in an uncharacteristic mood,
drenched and streaming with mud.
Strong winds obscured your features and I
wondered if I could survive your
tempestuous fits of temper.
With time I have seen you move
through hundreds of states of mind:
Long, silent summer nights when I
had to strain to hear a sound outside
my own head; loud staccato shots
of thunder after the emblematic flash;
your ground obscured by sheets of
exuberant wildflowers, their
petals grinning with giddiness and
unmatched colors: violet, poppy,
lavender and marigold.
One morning a jackrabbit sprang off its
ungainly hind legs to sniff a
bunch of newly-sprouted grass.
One of its cheeks was swollen;
an old tobacco-chewing hare? or
maybe it was a tumor.
States of mind like moods,
like the moon bubbling up
from the horizon like a blood orange,
or the mist of the Milky Way
frosting the dome of the winter sky.
I entered your strange places
and was seduced by the fence lizard
impaled on the palo verde, and
knew no human hand had placed it there.
You are the difficult character who
sends a sly smile and a conspiratorial
glance, then looks away. You are
the shaft of light striking the solitary flake
of mica in a wall of gneiss. You are
the cholla spine lodged in my palm. You are
the churlish wind dislodging my garden fence. You are
the cheap song of a mockingbird in the yucca. You are
the blades of the Joshua tree piercing a clump of snow.
You are the contours of my internal terrain, so much so that
sometimes, I cannot discern
your silence from my silence,
your keening from my keening,
your life from my own.
Mortar and Pestle
I am resting now.
For years, the women came
and brought their acorns to grind.
They brought their mesquite beans
and their chia seeds and their
juncus baskets and their milling songs.
The ground meal of their gathered grains
still sits between the tiny slits of
my crystal cells. I miss them.
They brought their eager children and
the caress of their grass skirts on my
mineral skin. But I am resting now.
For many years, the women have
not come. The acorns drop
from the oaks onto my granite face
like the seasonal tears
of the ones I miss.
Caryn Davidson works in the education office of Joshua Tree National Park and presents
environmental education programs to students in the park and in the classroom. Her work has been published in The Stone magazine, GEO German Edition, L.A. Weekly, and The Phantom Seed.
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