Haibun: Desert Rhythms
In the spring, the wind blows and pushes sand across the parking lots as if it is a stream, a stream that stays in place when the wind stops. Streams of water are far from here and are pushed through pipes and irrigation ditches. Underneath the Denny’s and Walmart sits soil that tells a different story than either of their headquarters grounds.
When I sweat in the heat of a spring day, I don’t. The sweat dries so quickly it’s unnoticeable. When I lived back east, the sweat clung to me like loneliness would when I was a teen. Here, the sun chaps my lips as the cold did back there. Such a different world.
This desert, her own rhythms, but dammed to make lawns where we should have brush and cacti, built to have houses like they do on the coast, paved to bring more people into this place. Yet her own rhythms, her own songs. In time she will reign again. In time what we force on her will be forced on each other and we will be destroyed like we try to destroy her. And when she reigns again, we will be forced to see her and have to see ourselves.
Sure there’s spring here, unfolding in a flower, dancing in a dust devil, the bees returning to the hive in on the hilltop, but it’s hidden behind the Jack in the Box.
from after winter’s REM, spring gems
whispers “je vous aime”
