A Drive Through New Mexico After the Rains

 

Driving my 2010 Fleetwood

Through New Mexico

I’m thankful for my air conditioning.

As I make my annual journey,

Following the spring rains,

To soak in the beauty

Of Jehovah Boreh’s desert landscape.

 

Brilliant blue,

Crisp and clear,

The dream-like sky

Is a great celestial vault.

That awaits the arrival

Of night’s starry canopy.

 

Heat rises from the earth’s surface,

Chased by opaque dust devils

That leap into the incandescent sky.

Look to the ditches

And sandy arroyos!

Splashes of vibrant yellow

Herald the desert marigolds.

 

Flowers,

Fiery flares of color,

Rhythmic and flowing,

Painted in broad bold strokes:

Sunflower yellows, tomato reds

And delightful oranges.

 

Fields of delicately hued watercolors,

Pink and white pastels,

Compete with Nature’s

More refined palette

Of magentas, umbers, acid greens,

And smoky blacks.

All are sprinkled

Like confetti on sugar cookies

Atop the sandy dunes.

 

Dancing cactus-like

Bristly broad-leafed yucca,

With their flags of clumpy cotton-balls,

Glaze the rolling hills,

Drawing buzzing bees

And whirring insects

To its fragrant succulence.

 

In the distance,

I see a majestic mesa.

Bone white at the bottom,

Changing to creamy red

And then blood red,

She wears a coal black crown.

 

Her skirt of low lying trees enclose her

Like green and brown cloaked soldiers.

 

Pinyon pines with short

Smooth needled hands

In bunches of twos and threes

Softy sign the wind.

 

Shaggy barked junipers with

Over lapping scale-like twigs of leaves,

Fan their green gray berries.

 

Shrubby, tangled, Gambel oaks

Twist in the moaning wind,

Nodding towards flaming bouquets

Of spiny crimson flowered Ocotillo

That hover over a battalion

Of feathery petaled yellow Coreopsis.

 

Nearby a sea of Orange Globe Mallows

Bloom atop a windswept hill

And weep for the coolness of dusk.

 

(Boreh: minor name of God that means “the Creator”)

 

Wayne O’Conner, March 2011