If you have any doubt about it, know that the desert
begins with the creosote.
—Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain
Because you are the flowering of drought.
Because you grow amber and resinous from barren soil.
Over desert flats you spread out unregarded.
You announce the festi
val of rain.Because you house detritus-feeders.
Because your white fruits are dispersed by pocket mice.
Because kangaroo rats nest in your midden.
Dwarfing redwoods, outlasting bristlecone pines,
oldest living thing born of the last ice age.
Because as a child I broke your white branch.
I could hide behind your tangled limbs.
Because you come from Argentina.
Because in Spanish you are gobernadora, hediondilla, guamis.
Because hediondilla means little stinker.
Because your prettiest name is covillea.
Pima tea, cure for infection and wound,
bouquet of oil and lac.
You are called greasewood.
You are pungent and odorous.
You sign your poem anonymous.
Because you are sealant and glue,
only jackrabbits eat your leaves.
I lift your flowers if I want to breathe rain.
You belong nowhere else but the desert.
Here are some old desert boys from their beginning who get something of that feeling, right, too. So sweet... (man I still recall seeing them JUST like this a hundred years ago.)
photo: http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/impacts/biology/pastclim/
4 comments:
Now I know what plant Louis L'Amour meant in all those westerns of his I read many years ago.
Exactly... it is incredible... the smell of rain in the desert even before it happens.
I am reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and thinking of you as fellow travelers that way, from arid Tucson to New England (Virginia in her case). When we lived on the prairies, we became aware of the raw yet subtle beauty of the wide open landscape and all therein, but we wouldn't trade the verdancy of our present home for anything. You'll see...
I actually agree - now - Peter but it has taken some time. Her Hightide in Tucson and Animal Dreams are among my favorites.
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