Desert Rose: (re)membering memory, here, for your lost flower

DESERT ROSE: (re)membering memory, for your lost flower

I am ancient geoglyph
Trace my blossom in the sand
Where Kokopelli lures me
To follow you everywhere

I’m your white desert rose,
Touch me, I’m from
A million years ago,
Pick me up, I’ll dissolve

I am water everywhere
Intersecting the desert,
Bringing life to the fat shores
Of humanity’s loaded seams

I am wind, then smoke,
Blowing through empty rooms
Flowing through your dreams
Then, standing still

I am drum
Loaning my face
To your beating heart
Your rake’s caress

I am rain and fog
Drifting down from clouds
Unable to fill the thirst
in your searching soul

I am thunder,
You are storm
You are standing still
I am second wind

I am the open mine
You penetrated deeply into me
leaving birthmarks
across my weathered skin

I am barbed wire fence
Circling what you left behind
Crumbling into an empty void
carved out w/your shovel's caress

I am pyramid
rocks on a lonely hill
talisman to goddesses & gods
you would call me Sphinx

I am silent, I am loud
I am meteor, I am sin
I am love, I am apple
I inhabit white sunstroke

Always waiting
Always alone
Always a memory
About to be lost
About to be re-born

I am an old pipe dream
Your last feathered song

I am water in the desert,
I am a fluted memory of land


photograph & poem
by Ruth Nolan

photograph: copy of flower two, by Ruth Nolan
copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan

poem: Desert Rose (re)rembering memory
copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan