​Treasure


Rich says the desert pack rat
loves to steal sparkly things, loves 
to eat wiring and hoses, and can strip 

a car engine clean overnight.  
He says they sneak up into the cups 
of his roof tiles and hide, bringing 

their treasures along, and birds roost 
in their tracks. The rats always 
leave something behind, he says, 

something in trade for what they take.  
They’re very fair that way.   
Once, when he’d left an old pickup truck 

in the yard, the pack rats filled it 
with cactus and sticks, prickly pear ears
and crammed the engine so full that Rich 

didn’t know if there was a motor left 
to tune up, to tweak and grease, to rev 
and coast into the desert sunset, 

the moon oiling the night sky—  
the glitter of all those riches 
hidden in some dark sparkling place.


-Free Verse, May/June 2004


Saguaro


This one’s filled with nesting grackles
and covered in a corduroy of spikes 
and waxy flutes. In spring,  
its accordions fill with water 
and weigh thousands of pounds.  
You wouldn’t want one to fall on you,
Rich says, and tells me of the woman 
who hit a saguaro with her car 
and when she got out to look at the damage, 
it fell over on top of her. I wonder 
what did her in—did those two-inch 
needles make her heart into a bloody pincushion?  
the green fruit of it stopped mid-thump? 
Or maybe its bulk shocked the breath out of her.
On the drive out of town, I see hills filled with them, 
saguaros standing at attention;
from here they look like hirsute statues, 
bristly stubble on the face of old 
mountains, their ancient arms raised 
in praise of great and dangerous things.

​-Free Verse, May/June 2004