February 2015
I have about 200 poems in public in many different places, both online and in print, in several countries from the US and UK, to the Philippines and Malaysia. I often write on natural themes, but recently have been responding to odd prompts. I'm a semi-retired teacher in California.
|
from The Alfalfa Chronicles: in which we take an imaginary drive around the West to visit some small towns and rural areas. But for every alfalfa circle we pass, there is much more desert. The West is mostly desert: eastern California, Oregon and Washington, southern Idaho, Nevada, western Colorado, southern Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico, the whole Mohave: the West is mostly desert, high or low. Let's consider the desert itself.
. |
|
Edge of the Desert which line the edge where is the end here's a fence— one side sage one side bare white playa salt flat, ancient dried lake-- coyote versus rattlesnake pinon or negation of plants straight sun, mottled shade can I step from this half to that dryness heat pulling me down the ground baked underfoot waves rising up my legs until I sink into a blaze of mineral deposits-- one desert and under the pinons here dusty squirrels forage for nuts sage sparrows sit with open beaks to dissipate the heat a few bees amble on meager flowers-- another desert 
Waiting for Rain
The dun and buff denizens of the upland deserts wait wings beating the soil beneath drab artemesia— tiny leaves conserve moisture thorns limit grazing heat envelops them, a pulsing fist of air—the birds rest mouths agape to cool, the lake low, muddy where geese wade in the warm algae, the basin cooks in summer— willets, snipes, sparrows all hide by day under the cliffs, bushes and culverts waiting for rain that seldom comes, the change in climate beyond their understanding, shriveled they will desiccate before winter. 
The Passing I follow everything— passing at 2:05 PM on Tuesdays and 10:34 PM on Saturdays I watch winter and summer I see them all— they think me blind, only hearing my yawning moan— I mark the same coyote family every week, she has a den under the trestle— I spied a rabbit in her mouth once. I notice distant things too they can't hide in the canyons where those miners squatted long ago, digging up the hills for nothing. I heard that fellow bought 40 acres, moved a shed up, lived there two years before bulldozing a single lane to it-- and over the hill I picture the last working Mohave ranch cowboys still roping and branding 800 head of hybrid beef that can tolerate the snow and heat equal their windmills still pumping bracken water into tin holding tanks out in the dust— I observe them all when I pass unseen behind my triple lamp flaring in the night against the hills as I round the slow curves-- they ignore me, but I know. 
|
©2015 Emily Strauss