Robin and Marline were over for their annual Desert pilgrimage a couple of weeks back. They stay in the Casita and Robin is a very early riser. And also a poet.
Here are his reflections on mornings in the desert.
Desert Dream
The desert is an ocean with its life above ground
— after “A Horse With no Name”
In the early dawn, coffee mug in hand, I scramble
up the backyard schist and geniss outcrop to perch
above enchantment— cactus, agave, mesquite;
delicate, spindly and brutal shapes, sizes, bristly
spines, variegated fronds, spikey scalloped edges,
overseen by towering granite and conglomerate
boulders smoothed, weather grated layered hues
of sand and burnt sienna, mica chips sparkling
amid the splashes of red, mauve, yellow, orange
flora— evolved, adapted. Not all is so enduring;
scattered coyote bone, skeletal saguaro husks laid
bare amongst the baked, time-honoured diversity
recasting beneath the sky’s unending blue, edged
with a flock of puffy cumulus drifting from the far
horizon, quail scurrying for seed, insects amongst
the gravely flooring, their topknot head plumes wary
of the turkey vultures circling high above the giant
boulders stacked by what hand or god, precariously
balanced in mute anticipation like numbed bells,
their hush struck by a harsh call of a cactus wren,
an aircraft’s drone toward a destination, the snort
of a wandering javelina sniffing out insects, nibbling
prickly pear, as the heightening sun’s arc profiles
a band of armed saguaros in a shadow creep and tilt
across the sandy scree, a cottontail’s long ears twitch,
a monarch butterfly floats along its unhurried path—
the world let go in a moment’s breath of desert air.
