Poem: Cactus Flowers
This is another of the poems I wrote in college, describing what was happening in my life with God. A desert landscape is usually associated with difficult times spiritually, but at this time I felt connected to the desert as a place of life, vividness, new things springing forth. The image of flowers blooming in the desert particularly caught me: hence this poem.
Cactus Flowers
Gradual as evening, you
have me
securely as desert night
contains all its small creatures.
I sense the future’s shape
in your increasing simplicity:
like the desert
vivid and direct.
Few things are necessary.
captured by what I call love,
which is not much different
from what is called fear,
I follow because I can
do nothing else,
like birds
that hunt water
place to place.
I am no longer my own.
I obey
the new law, incessant
as nightfall
and dawn:
with morning
the sky is colored
like a cactus flower, the land’s
sparse and perfect
culmination.
A few desert links
- Poem: The Copper Desert
Another desert poem by myself. - Spring in the Desert - Cacti in Bloom
Description of the desert by a desert dweller - lots of great pictures of flowering cacti.
