Something I wrote, from 2005; I think it merits a replay:
Spirit
Parched, cracked earth.
Empty skies and endless horizons.
Cold, savage winds that carry with them sharp, brittle shards of sand that
bite into skin like claws.
Relics of stunted trees, long-ago crippled by too-much wind and too-little water.
Rusted, broken barbed-wire fences, the decaying work of people with a lot of spirit and not enough money.
Screeching hawks and searching buzzards.
Everything is raw, pointed, sharp here.
Shelter is rare.
Amid this desolation is striking beauty.
It is the beauty of absolute isolation and the purest of privacy.
The core of nature rests in these stretches of mile upon mile upon mile.
We can think here. We can understand ourselves, and each other.
And then spring comes.
Torrents of rain, flashes of brilliant lightning.
Water changes the land, and it changes us.
Gray and brown transform into shades of pale green.
Grass grows where even seeds shuddered before.
Pink flowers stab the sky and yellow petals shower the earth.
The land replenishes itself and strains at its boundaries, bursting with energy and color.
Colors do not mask the desolation.
They enhance it and make it palpable.
We can think here. We can understand ourselves, and each other.
3 comments:
Beautiful poem. Sounds like my part of the country. Where do you live, John? (I'm sure you've said somewhere but I'm new to the party!)
What I love most about the desolation surrounding my piece of wilderness is the way it surprises me with its life, the way it forces me to consider the static, the small, the illusion of permanence.
Excellent poem, John. Made me think of being in Arizona, and the memory of how the desert was transformed in the week after a snowstorm blew through in Feb. 2001. That was something to see. Your poem captures the transformative power of nature, especially that of the desert.
Nice! And it sure seems like everything that grows in the desert has a sticker of some sort.
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