Across the broad Sonoran plain a distant thunderhead
rears like some vast tree – shedding leaves of rain across the
thirsty mesa flats. Soon, flickering branches of light appear in
the darkened clouds, bearing thunder’s grumbling, angry
fruit in the dense and heavy-laden sky.
Then the storm gathers up her grey skirts of rain and strides –
now like a hurrying lover – across the desert floor. I smell her
perfume as she nears – wild-flowers mixed with earth, with
creosote, and sand. And as the storm arrives, her passion grows
into a wild embrace and rolling ecstasy of thunder, wind, and light.
Yet suddenly as it began, the passion of the storm abates,
and in the after-stillness, calmed and spent, her cool breath
caresses earth’s warm skin with whispered promises of rain and
storms to come. But the cottonwoods and palo verde trees know
her desert ways – that it may be long before we see her again.
Richard West was Regents’ Professor of Classics in a large public university and has published numerous books and hundreds of articles and poems – his poetry in more than thirty literary journals. Now living in the Desert Southwest, he enjoys learning to cook and attempting to add flavor to his poems.
