September 2022
Bio Note: As summer drags on in the Mojave, it feels like the heat will last forever. Early morning walks are my salvation—that, and taking refuge in poetry. My latest book, Full Circle, has 120 haiku and senryu poems, many of them about the changing seasons in the desert. There’s a lot of glory out here along with the grit.
The Spinner
Tentacles of silken thread
stretch from pot to pot
on the patio, and up
the stairs to succulents
on the sunlit ledges.
There, swaying in space,
sit the spiraled center and
its architect, an orange
clump big as a cat’s eye,
legs drawn in, waiting,
as I bat the web apart.
The moorings stick
to my hands, and the more
I pull, the more the spider
reels out, until I finally see this,
and stop, and laugh—
for a moment letting go
of my fight with a foe’s
deliberate designs
on my universe.
Needed Elsewhere
The sleeping earth saw no sign
of a storm, until, before dawn,
a soundless sky flashed white,
then white again, electricity
seeking an outlet. That energy
formed a jagged bolt, struck
a single Joshua tree, reduced
it to a cinder. Were those
ragged arms needed elsewhere,
to hold something unnamed,
in a place without bodies?
The Sycamore
Sycamore tree and God say the same:
You won’t meet your end in these woods.
Wake up. Watch stars between branches.
Keep trying to do good. Which means:
Escape. Use your hands, your feet, your teeth.
You have the power to hurt the hurter.
Find the will. Find the way.
Sycamore bows in the wind, whispers—
Grow up. Get up. Get out of here.
That’s what your legs are for.
You didn’t expect to move again.
But you will get up, and run.
Not like the others.
Not like them.
©2022 Cynthia Anderson
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