Desert Colors That Compose Us

In a town meant for passing through, there are some things that stay.

Living along the highway, there’s the light yellow

of Coke bottles filled with pee, left behind like souvenirs

from someone else’s route to a place where all the stars have landed,

piled up among the desert grasses, weary

with the weight of wishes made upon them as they fell.

But this is also where yucca springs up like mighty swords

along the hidden colors of dirt corridors,

where this daughter of the desert retrieves and absorbs

the sun and its kin like tokens of worship:

the black-tipped ear of the jackrabbit,

the bee-addled yellow barrel-cactus bloom,

the goldfinch-flecked eyes of the stray cat

with more than feathers on her tongue,

the pocket-knifed throat of the prickly pear,

oozing juice bright as blood exposed to oxygen,

the turquoise-bellied scales of the lizard’s mosaic,

the black of crows punctuating telephone wires.

On lunch break we sit on the muted green of milk crates,

cigarette butts scattered around our feet like daisies.

Our love grows, even though unlikely, like creosote

through the cracks in the grey concrete.

This is reverence. An ancient acknowledgment.

Heads bowed and blooming under the amber sun,

we notice, built in the cradle of cactus arms:

a nest, a home of colors, among needles and thorns.