opening day’s eye pierces dawn shredding fragile cloud with sun daggers rising light enlivening early lizards on red rocks warming creosote bush scent and following the dipping dance of the hummingbird salt cedars stand sentinel through the drought in spectral rivers of sand where the swallows serenade their hunt over dry beds feathered grasses flutter in the freshening breath all silver green growth only to fuel the fires and the brittle fingers of winterfat point widdershins in accusation ashes float down wind from towering cumuli of forest infernos these grey gravestones of smoke and cloud mark death in the high desert this is the summer sun no monsoon to bring relief from this burning thirst nor even virga to shade burrow and shelter this is summer in these harsh times season to fear the morning
Wednesday Word
for 1 June 2022
summer
I am a child of the desert. We do not love summer at the best of times. But this year… it is a season of terror… and it has hardly begun. More of New Mexico is currently on fire right now than during the entirety of the previous record-setting year, 2002. And fire season has many months to go.
It is hard to enjoy the green around me. I don’t trust it, I suppose. Trees this close to the house translate into destruction where I’m from… So I have to keep reminding myself that June in Vermont is benign, full of blossom and strawberries. Even the drought is little more than inconvenience.
But my heart keeps turning back to the images on my computer screen of the places I love best burning to ash. Because we would turn from this path in time…
©Elizabeth Anker 2022
Wednesday Discourse
Wednesdays are open posts. Anything you feel like sharing (except the usual injunctions against foul messaging). If you have something happy to talk about, I could really use the smile…
By My Solitary Hearth 