Poem: Morning Meditation

For the first time in years, I am assembling some poems for submission. This is a revision of a poem I wrote shortly after moving to Tucson, back in 2002. I didn't write much back then, so this poem is a bit of an aberration in my life. But even though it isn't one of my best works, I like it -- the feel of it, the sense of newness.

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morning meditation

Awakening to the Sonoran Desert, pale
blue sky morning, already warm.

Orange blossoms of the ocotillo
speak of April, the great flowering,

and coiled in the lowest cleft
of a cholla, a rattlesnake waits.

So early this year, his flicking tongue
a reminder this desert is wild

even in the city. I watch his head
sway elegantly in the morning sun

as I sit on my deck, an observer
of the dance he enacts from instinct.

So new to me, this place,
only two and a half weeks,

yet, the heat is beneath my skin,
the muted greens flavor my breath.

It penetrates, this desert, gets
into my blood, a welcoming.

I have come here to wander,
to find myself in the vast silences,

and I have come here to love:
a woman, the cycles of being, life.

So I sit, watching the magic dance
of the ancient hunter, his subtle charms,

feeling myself the prey, knowing
I will be devoured, whole, still breathing.

I crave that surrender, knowing
something must die to be reborn.

I watch the rattlesnake strike
his prey, a small lizard,

quick, with precision, and with
the fiercest, wildest love.

Tags: Morning Meditation, Sonoran Desert, poem, poetry, rattlesnake