Desert Home Diaspora

photograph "Bees One: Turtle Mountains Wilderness Near the Rock Altar and Aztec Well, Mojave Desert" by Ruth Nolan copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan

If you could call me one more time,
I’d say I’m looking at a raven sky,

that the California desert isn’t Israel,
though our constellations are the same,

I’d say that I’m overjoyed by pink
wildflower clouds in the garden, it’s

April, and the tiny green oranges
you fingered grow bigger on the trees

I’d say that the dog I love is still
healing from his back injury,

that I made a bit of extra cash from
selling the didgeridoo and shotgun,

that the needled Palo Verde trees
are sprayed with yellow designer flowers,

that the red-throated Costa’s hummingbirds
suckle white sugar syrup from my feeder,

that the sunflower seeds you scattered
with one toss of the hand are now sprouting,

that the crows are occupying the tallest wasp-
filled palm, though you once beat them all away,

I swim to the bottom of the deep end of the
pool these torched summer nights, crying stars,

pretending that I haven’t been forsaken
in the promised land, that I don’t need you.


by Ruth Nolan, copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan
forthcoming published in “Raven and Crow Anthology”,2011, editor Cynthia Anderson.

for the one who died
halfway between desert and Inland Empire
in the heart of the Badlands
right before Easter Day 2010