(January 2022-August 2022. I wrote the majority of this during my last desert period, in January and February 2022, at ReSource, Quartzsite, and Tonopah. Properly this poem belongs to that era of my writing, next to “Owl Aware with Saguaros,” “The Full Moon Reminds Us,” I heard tale of this saguaro,” etc. However, as a bigger, more important poem, I didn’t end up finishing editing it until here in Colorado in August, at the same time I edited and finished The Sequoias Speak poem. I feel as though it is important for me to clarify that I wrote the majority of The Saguaros Speak BEFORE The Sequoias Speak. The saguaros were very special to me in 2021 when I was first blossoming as a poet and building my buslife, and I was therefore open to listening to them when I returned in 2022. I learned to listen to the saguaros first, which may partially be due to the silence and simplicity of the desert ecosystem: it made it easier to hear them when I went slow enough. The saguaros taught me the listening that led me to be able to truly listen to the sequoias and many other things. I personally believe that the saguaro blossom is nature’s greatest refutation of TS Eliot’s misguided ‘Waste-Land.’)
The Saguaros Speak
1
The saguaros speak
Slowly…
I would like to listen at their speed to their speech.
They have so much to teach,
These sagacious saguaros,
These old masters of life’s challenge.
They are the keystone of the desert:
The fate of this world rests on their strong spines.
The saguaros stand tall—
They carry the gilded flitters, the white-tailed doves, the lesser long nosed bats, the hummingbirds.
In their shadow the desert lives.
The saguaros speak as all life speaks—
By taking shape.
This, then, is how water best expresses itself
When it must speak carefully.
2
A language saguaros speak is math,
Math growing beneath numbers,
The math of maximal efficiency,
The math of moistness and chapped lips,
The math of scarce survival.
This math speaks in the spacing of needles.
3
The necessary starkness and simplicity of the saguaros
Serve to highlight their differences, their individual voices.
This too is math—
To be organic is to be perfectly imperfect,
Lumpy messy utterances of a lumpy messy world
Perfectly accounted for.
The bend of this saguaro arm is a perfect
Whole with the rest of the universe,
Accountable to every wind and wave of the world around.
Every push and pull, every particle in the soil,
Every part of this saguaro’s history requires it to be an individual.
4
The saguaros speak their history.
The saguaros’ history is the history of all life and more.
The saguaros have been alive as long as anything.
Amoeba move through them as through me and you.
Eons of dying water churn
Into the stable form of saguaro,
Infolded with a billion last breaths
Breathing now the desert air.
The memory of the universe ripples backward
From any moment—
The saguaros speak memory.
5
Grandfather saguaro speaks
Spreading consciousness stored for over 400 years.
He speaks for the Hohokam,
The dried-up ones, washed away,
But still speaking through living descendants,
Both human and saguaro.
He speaks of a time before white people
Ever saw a saguaro,
Ever stepped foot in this alien land.
He speaks of a time when all the people
Revered and respected the sacred saguaros
As the birds and the bats do.
These people are still here.
They still survive the June sun in Tucson
To harvest the sweet red fruit of the desert,
To taste the ripe blood of all ancestors.
The old ways will live as long as the saguaros.
6
The saguaros in the waste-land blossom.
7
The saguaros sing in white flowers
Opening so briefly after desert spring rains.
The song is sweet, and loved
By the bats, birds, and bugs.
It is the greatest song of the desert,
The greatest show of the year,
And everything depends on the strength
Of the saguaros’ voices.
There is hope for the west yet,
In the midst of the desert
Where few poets have looked,
Let alone listened:
The song of the saguaro blossom
Is the song of hope
For those holy fools who have lost their way
For far more than forty days.
The saguaro blossom sings
The fruit is coming! The fruit is coming!
Your waiting, struggle, desiccation in the desert heat
Will be redeemed! More than redeemed!
Stay a little longer, persist past your limit,
And you will taste the sweet fruit
That justifies all suffering.
8
The saguaros remind me
I must carry my own water
To carry others
With my blossoming.
9
The saguaro grows with open arms
Yet cannot be hugged in life.
Only the core wood,
Revealed in death,
Is smooth to touch.
The saguaros needles speak smaller
Than the large softness of saguaro flesh.
Are you surprised that the softest trees
Thrive in the harshest land?
10
The saguaros say loud and clear
There is mercy in the desert.
11
Death spreads,
But the saguaros survive
12
Driving by the saguaros they still speak
With upraised arms.
They wave at you, they say Hello!
Goodbye!
Welcome!
Good to see you!
Touchdown! It’s good!
Woohoo!
Some saguaros are very silly.
You will have to meet them yourself.
There are as many unique characters,
Unique personalities, as there are saguaros
And listeners.
To me, leaving the desert I love,
The saguaros say
Come back! You have not yet tasted our fruit!
13
Every arm of the saguaro speaks.
They speak of the potential for blossoms.
Every arm is a new life, a hedge against death,
One more chance to marshal enough strength
And water to flower, this year, this time.
One possible blossom per arm, at most,
Opening ever so briefly.
That is the limit, and it is never reached.
Not every arm will flower,
But the saguaro grows more arms all the same
With herculean effort, with every drop of life
The desert can muster,
For all that matters is the small chance
To bloom, to live again,
To continue the conversation anew.
14
Some saguaros go all in, armless.
I think I admire these spears the most.
A spear speaks skyward—
A single thrust toward
Immortality, all life bet
On a blossom prayer.
15
The saguaro spear speaks—
The only way out is up
Raising a single chance
To grasp heaven in a blossom.
I have faith that all paths
Stretch to source—
I need only follow
One.
Beatin' Paths ~~~ The journey to the Great American Novel 