Tag: United States of America

Joshua Tree

Desert shadows and silhouettes
Hazy sky and spectral highlights
Joshua, Tree of Life
Standing tall and lordly

Over this world
Of heat and sorrow
Which takes so much
Then leaves so little

In the desert lands
All gravel stone and sand
But for the cholla
In her prickly shrine

Sometimes
The chasm between
You and I
Seems so deep
Seems so wide

I cannot see
Into the depths
I cannot see
The other side

Even the old

familiar

roads change

So must I

along with them

or become lost

Ah, if only I had
The time and patience
Of Nature’s paintbrush
The glories I could create

In this precious slice
Of time allotted
I record her beauty
With all my skill

Sometimes
The way seems impassable
Formidable barriers
Impenetrable walls

But I stand here, now
Beyond so many
Impassable barriers
All along the way

Stone tells a story
Of a vast sea
Millions of years old
Millions of years ago

Layer upon layer
Of silt
Of time
Accumulating

Patterns in the stone
Regular and irregular

In form
In structure
In colour
In time

Beauty pens her poetry
Deftly in the nature of things

In the dry
I am not thirsty
In the heat
I am not too warm

In the sand
I dig in roots
In the sun
I bask in life

I spend some time
In a place like this
A place which strips away

Pretense
Distraction
Aggrandisement
Avarice

I find my presence
In the present

And in that presence
Is love