A Desert Year: 20 March

    The sun is just up
but I am late on the trail:
    a old desert rat
with a straw hat and old boots,
    wizened and weathered,
rests on a flood-worn boulder
    watching the dry wash
fill up with golden light.
    We nod in greeting:
"Getting warm," he says -- "A-yup."
    I would stop to talk
if I were ready to rest
    but I've just started
working up a good sweat
    and head up the trail
striding through the waking world
    past winter-green trees,
yellow desert marigolds,
    short violet lupines,
small flowers in white and gold;
    two butterflies flit,
a thrashers calls from thornscrub,
    on a mesquite branch
fluttering mourning doves mate.
    The official start
of the astronmic spring
    is the equinox,
but this land has long since sprung:
    we who've learned to read
the open book of desert leaves,
    quick green, fast flowers,
the rapid generations
    of feathers and fur,
know that this growing season
    lasts only so long
until the bake-out of summer
in the rhythms of the year.


---L.