Xeriscape Poetry
"Help him kill it!
A red snake!
It must be dead."
"No, never,"
This lonely walker said.
The next two poems report on an incidents that occurred several years ago in the southern California and Nevada deserts. Rolling Thunder is gone now, but he tells a similar story about a run - in he had as a child with a mountain lion, in the book Rolling Thunder Speaks from Clear Light Publishers in Santa Fe.
A New Mexico artist told me the best time to walk through the wilderness is in the winter. I believe him.
Sleeping in the desert
Sleeping in the desert,
I heard no hiss,
no rattle.
A deep voice
Was his,
warning:
"It's about time," he said.
And as I turned over quickly
To see
The rattlesnake and me
With my neck within his strike.
Slowly, I pulled back
Stood up, and hiked
To a tent found beneath a bush
Where some hiker thrust it
As he got a ride.
And riding,
Left the desert.
Left his tent,
Left myself
And a rattlesnake.
In the Desert Night
Bobcat growling.
Bobcat circling.
Bobcat in the desert night.
Bobcat meowing in surprize.
Bobcat puddling
beyond my darkened eyes.
Bobcat moving on
In the desert night.
The next poem is about a single - line of trees planted as a windbreak. Windbreaks are more effective when planted in rows of two or three, but, knowing the history of this land, seeing these trees made me feel very good.
A Forest
I found a forest yesterday
in a single line of trees.
Rocky moutain juniper,
returning to control our breeze.
Forest primeval, forest huge,
forest spreading over forty thousand miles.
Forest gone.
Forest here only for a while.
Forest bull - dozed back
to yonder mountain glade.
Forest lost to cities, ranches, streets, parades.
Branches left only on trees our city leaves.
I found a forest yesterday,
in a single line of trees.
The Last Piñon Pine
The single piñon pine proudly stands -
an investment in time made years ago,
on these once - private lands.
Piñon tall, piñon productive.
Piñon surviving o'r grasses more seductive.
This ranch land dry, ungiving, unfertile,
bereft of piñon pine,
our slow - growing, arboreal turtle.
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