the desert
Though it's winter, the sun this morning
had the quality of a summer day.
Light is like that,
expressive of something,
open to interpretation.
If I had woken from a coma,
I might have guessed it was spring,
just before the birds begin to sing.
But it was silent.
More silent even than before the birds return.
As if they had never been there at all,
and were nothing but a tale told to children.
There is one silence that is everything,
and another which is deafening.
The first imbues connectedness, fullness, balance;
the other a feeling of excruciating emptiness.
In between is the noise
of everyday life.
I put on a nature documentary
and hear a familiar voice
summarize the desert's history
and those who live there by choice.
One by one as he details their struggles,
I realize: I am these animals.
The lone zebra,
wandering his territory
looking for mates.
The swallows flying over
thousands of miles of rock and sand,
with no place to rest.
But mostly, I am the resurrection plant,
lying dormant for decades
while waiting for wind and rain
to put me somewhere I can grow and sprout.
I live for a few weeks before the water dries up,
just long enough to put my seeds out.
In this barren landscape,
there isn't even anything to pester me.
Though contrary to what you might expect,
I feel anything but free.
I lie in bed and stare at the sunlight
telling me the hour by its angle.
A gift shop, an ice cream place,
a small town, not long ago.
Just another memory I hold
that no one else will ever know.
A tattoo on my wrist,
meant to remind me of the moment,
but I'm looking right through my body,
as if I didn't own it.
As if I were only an impression
left by something of greater force,
a footstep in the mud
along its course.
Fluctuations, inundations,
entire galleries flushed down drains.
Stains left by rains of eons gone.
Dreams mix in turbulent flows
before seeping down below
where no one goes.
They will see no dawn.
Onward the day marches, the week, the year.
Shifting like the sands,
I can't follow your rhythms,
but your rhythms wear me down
with their endless repetition:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday,
July, August, September.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve,
nineteen ninety-four, twenty twenty-three.
I am all of these animals,
always barely getting by.
But to you I am only the desert
you think you couldn't survive.
~
2017 - 2021