Xeriscape Poetry
I write poetry for enjoyment.
To me, poetry is perceptive, a singling of vision to one or more essential features.
Desert Life
Cactus blossum,
rare as rain.
Cactus spike
protects with pain.
Pentstemon
Pentstemon,
whose dry beauty lies
on tall spindly stalks,
as lonely petals up
those stems do quietly walk.
South
My south - facing apartment
sees no sun directly
in the summer.
In June, July, and August,
my south - facing apartment -
what a bummer.
Desert Arroya
Desert arroya,
earned earth,
scarred birthplace
of lizard, coyote,
and rattlesnake.
Desert arroya,
the place where
the turkey's thirst
is slaked.
The Desert Southwest
The desert southwest
denuded of forests, like a vest,
unneeded as a three-piece suit.
Gone our trees with all the rest
of a once proud nation.
We call this a civilization.
Made by soldiers, ranchers, brutes,
the desert southwest,
denuded of forests like a vest.
This is an early poem, to a certain extent a winter poem. There are actually five seasons in northeastern New Mexico. The monsoon period is one of the better times of the year, and I will write a poem about it. I've experienced summer rains while growing up in the midwest and working in Texas, but I had not experienced a monsoon before this year. I will enjoy more of them.
"Sunset Mazazine's number ten" is a reference to the climate regions used in Sunset's Western Garden Book and other Sunset publications. It is much more accurate than the government's climate zones. What do people in other regions use?
Ten - Four
Do four seasons tell?
No, four seasons tattle.
Tucumcari, Sunset Magazine's
Bo Derek of the earth:
A ten, this place of water's dearth,
often scarred with hail, drought, and freeze,
with winds never so light as a breeze.
Bolero and the snake's death rattle:
Tucumcari, Sunset magazine's number ten.
Do four seasons tell?
No, four seasons tattle.
Among other things, this is one of the oldest areas of the earth above water. We have our Dinosaur Museum. We also have something more fun, scrap metal dinosaurs, part of the community college's campus xeric landscape. I realize that brontasaurus has been renamed; eventually I'll rename this poem: Pteradactyl, Apatosaurus:
Pteradactyl, Brontasaurus
Pteradactyl, Brontasaurus,
Made from metal, nuts and bolts,
Displayed before us,
Standing in a chorus
For the students, children, adults.
Back lit upon a wall
On this campus
Eyes of metal.
All gone before us:
Teradactyl, brontasaurus.
The Red Snake
The red snake,
surviving the city's bull-dozed plot,
wiggled quickly into the city's walkway drain,
ignoring the bird's treeless, bushless eggs.
The red snake,
wiggling to the apartment's nearby evergreen,
where an audience surrounding a man wielding
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