Nothing With Out

The essential desert — a poem

a body: still… standing, faulted,

transfixed under anvils of Sun’s heat.

open taken done.

the human i once was — now unlayering…

sacrificing the “I” in me to unbearable beauty, this place

of tenacious life: essentials

pure. sacrifice the me. the light seared bone.

me gone. remains light unites one with ecology’s

strengths, weakness, all. takes this body for pity’s sake:

slogs it forward through shifting sands, lifting, placing,

stepping, repeat… dream visions

blurs of moisture hence creating from nothing

of desert; then creates and moves on.

light breathes… and out —

I have been drawn to the tenacity and bold strength of life in deserts from the scrub of New Mexico’s plains to Death Valley. There is unfathomable truth, strength and immense beauty in the desert. It’s heat is bone penetrable. I am confronted with all my faults and the darkest shadows and loathings of what I don’t wish to see when I recall the desert. She is the phoenix.

Thanks for reading.

And thanks to Warren Brown for this delicious prompt.

Thanks also to Diana C. Ravyne Hawke Joseph Lieungh Orla Kenny Marcus