Spring in the Desert

Today I'm doing a spring poem for National Poetry Month. For an example on how to do one, go here:

Spring looks like rising goathead stickers and a fresh crop of pot holes.

Spring sounds like coyotes hunting a neighborhood pet and palo verdes humming full of bees.

Spring feels bipolar--oven-like one minute, goosebumps the next.

Spring smells like creosote beneath a dusting of raindrops, and the wind sifting through the orange blossoms.

Spring tastes like blowing grit and fragrant oranges.

© 2016 by H. Linn Murphy

Dia Diaz--Spring Is Poem

We're doing a Spring Senses poem. To see the parameters, go here.

So this is my Spring Senses poem:

SPRING IS

It's a wonder anything grows in this oven!

Spring looks like the flowers on the orange trees and the chartreuse of palo verde buds opening into the wind (and the beginning of nine more months of summer).

Spring sounds like little cactus wren babies cheeping in the cactus (and people sneezing from the palo verde pollen).

Yup. The one thing that grows in our yard--a weed.

Spring feels like the breeze coming off sunbaked sand (and the searing pain of a cactus sticker poking you in the foot).

There's probably a lizard in there somewhere doing push-ups.

Spring smells like cactus flowers baking and creosote in the 10 minute rainstorm (and all the road tar washing down the street with your yard topsoil).

Spring tastes like the promise of prickly pear jam (and defeat at not killing off the wasp colony which has invaded your bird houses).

© 2014 by H. Linn Murphy  

Monsoon Moon

At last the blistering misery of the summer heat is easing slightly.

Before the towering black air castles dump their waterfalls of lifesaving water, we still hibernate in our darkened caverns and pray for surcease. The heat bakes the ground so hard that anything planted wilts to dessicated brown sticks within hours. Animals won't even come out to eat. The air is leaden and breathing is chore-some.

Then the cloud castles crack, sending out their invisible cannonballs and the sky comes alive with a fury of sound and light. Within seconds the curtains of rain descend; slashing the shriveled leaves from their bushes; filling every divot and gully; sending up steam from the baking streets; sluicing down the dusty walls; making rivers of the roads and alleys. Trees and sometimes power poles topple and wires careen crazily across roads and lawns. Palm fronds go whipping past in a flurry of brown-tipped green flotsam.

We run out into the deluge and are instantly drenched and shivering, but it's a welcome chill. We roll up our pants and stomp through the puddles. Court and Bear, on a dare, lie down in the river of muddy water. Luckily there is a shower at the end of their scenario.

Suddenly little pebbles mean nothing to our thirsty feet as we wade down the new stream to the wash, looking for shiny pebbles and strange treasures. The chocolaty water sweeps down the wash and out into a desert delta, past the bike jumps and debris the bikers have left in their wakes. We send leaves and feathers down the streams, hoping to see them emerge downstream. The furthest traveler makes the 'owner' the winner. They jump around screaming and laughing crazily, secretly just trying to soak the others more completely.

The deluge lasts only a few minutes and then the gray sheets move away across the city to fill other washes and roads. Runnels of muddy water trickle down through the labyrinthine patches of prickly pear and mesquite and then, joining other runnels, rush in freshets into the main wash.

Now the air fills with the scent of creosote and sage and hot blacktop. The rivers become streams, then creeks, then tiny runnels, and then they are gone, sucked at last into the thirsty topsoil. The ants come scurrying out to begin once more their endless quest for a fully stocked larder. The doves and quail emerge.

And the toads come out. The air, now, is full of the deep notes of their mating calls. The desert and yards are alive with toady meet-n-greet sessions. Busier streets fill with squashed toad pizzas.

When the sun has set, the mockingbirds begin their random choirs. There is the occasional soft cooing of a dove. Once again the geckos come out near the porch lights to snack on moths. With the passing of the rain, with the exception of an errant breeze, the mercury toils up and up again until we have come full circle.

Solar Serenade

The searing heat of summer flays like a blast furnace when the door opens. In the summer we become troglodytes hiding away in the relative coolness of our darkened houses.

Doughy, moon-like flab adheres to our bodies in gobbets because we do not come out until the merciless sun has passed the Prime Meridian. We buy machines to aid us in our quest for the lard-less body, and hide them away in the coolth of our 'caves'. Then we take vitamin D supplements and paint ourselves tan to mimic Sol's healthy rays.

Our pets are nocturnal. We have befriended the owls and mockingbirds, the rabbits and bats. The animals of the daylight have become brazen in their lack of human predators.

We do our work to the light of the summer moon. Even then, the remnant radiation of daylight rises in waves to the night sky, causing the light to shimmer. We pity those who must work when the sun is high, often taking them cool drinks of life-saving water--which does not stay cool very long. The sun dries our clothing but also rapidly rots away anything left outside.

Crops must be planted in the shade and ceaselessly watered. Often they wither before they have been in the ground a day. Those crops which do enjoy the scalding sunlight bear sharp spines and suck water like sponges.

Beware the super-heated desert wind. It can scour the face from an unwary traveler within seconds with its flying grit. It sweeps through off the desert and can lift the roof from a house as well as any tornado. I've seen it happen.

That said, wish you were here...:o)