The Observance

 

Oh!  young woman mounted on rocks

you watch the new month rise, its sun

red as the salamander

who clings to the lush comfort

of moss and leaves.  Who flares

inside the spongy dampness of a log.

 

You wait for the blood rush

of morning to flood the sky

and fill your veins with vitality.

 

So watch carefully and cherish

those moments that soon dissolve

into hot flashes of glare. The desert turns

to burlap and sage brush. Cacti

and Joshua trees stoop 

in the wind as if listening

 

to something they can’t hear

only feel. The snake rattles -- the womb’s song

of stones Yet, somewhere a scrub jay

flashes its blue agility

under the prickly scrap,

 

and you remember eyes.

The luminous insight

of  Sibyl

            or Crone

burning a thousand years

beyond her age.