The Impermanence of Things

Monday, October 15, 2018

The beauty of the desert
is not pink sands in purple sunsets,
not in the sweet smell of creosote in rain.

It is not the family of quail with their royal headdresses,
toddling together between bushes
finding their way home again and again.

It is not the expanding reach of the prickly pear,
nor the stubborn, staunch squat of the barrel cactus.

The beauty of this desert
is the impermanence of things.

In the time of the sun, heat seems to ooze from every crevice,
and the earth cries for relief.
Clouds move in and the dust rises to meet them,
greeting all the desert
with breaths of rushing wind and crashes of thunder,
God saying "Here Am I" by striking the flint of divinity
and pouring blessings on dry bones.

The rains keep falling, flooding, until one lonely howl from Coyote
raises the choir of eerie, longing voices
to stir up the ancient ache
of the need to belong.

Their chorus reigns until Saguaro's coronation,
her white and yellow crown
a nectar cup for bees to drink
and make honey.

Just before time starts it's strange cycle again,
it suspends itself between sorrow and celebration.
The Queen of the Desert
gives her ripened red fruit to the people, saying,
"Eat,
drink nectar.
Embrace your place
in the sacred, ordered chaos of reciprocity."

The impermanence of things
in this land of five seasons, not four,
bears the gift of presence.

In lives entangled,
the permanence of love
does not fade
with the impermanence of things.



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