Sonoran Desert Song

BY PAM USCHUK

Sing desert’s season of California poppies
sunrise yellow and holding up cups of blood orange light
on Yaqui and Tohono O’odham lands.
Sing penstemon’s hot pink lipstick blooms,
lucent waxy aloe, stunted lupine singing the blues,
greasewood’s yellow flowers verdins consume,
month of mating butterflies and white-winged doves.
Sing new desert hares and bobcat kits
mewling in our neighbor’s eaves. Sing
cholla cactus, ocotillo’s sudden green,
sing vermillion flycatcher wings
before heat’s warriors run amok and fire
eats ponderosas and mesquites.
Sing the births of black-chinned hummingbirds
in the drought-stricken eucalyptus tree.
Sing coyote’s tail teasing our dog wild through chain link fence.
Sing desert surviving drought, all human greed.
Sing saguaro flowers going to flesh red fruit
doves, bats, and javelinas will eat.