Morning lifts from the desert just before noon. I immediately regret each moment I missed— where was I when the sun rose here?
Light moves across basalt, sage, rabbitbrush, the red earth reflects warmth back into the blue.
Sunshine and earth, a love affair.
A strand of hair crosses my mouth and tickles my nose— as I swipe it away, I discover heat-burnished tenderness.
Sunshine, earth, and me— a love affair.
When I first arrived, I heard the crunch of my boots and all I brought with me. Water and ice sloshing against steel.
Also
half-finished conversations. A list. A sentence. A prayer, still wanting to know Him more.
Then the wind rises through the sage
and every branch answers.
Not all at once. Antiphonal. There must be a conductor here somewhere.
One stem, then another, then a hundred more clicking, brushing, rattling in no hurry to finish the song.
I have a feeling the song began at the beginning and will go on forever— it is a gift to hear this movement.
A Common Raven crosses low over the wash,
wings opening like someone who knows me and awaits my approach to the threshold.
Clearly, I am welcome here.
Higher still, a White-throated Swift not to be outdone cuts through the blue so quickly I hear the turn before I find the bird.
At my feet, a bee disappears into yellow rabbitbrush, comes out dusted, and goes right back in.
I'm proud of the bee and respect it enough to be a little scared, too.
Farther out, a Horned Lark drops three clean notes into the open country and flies off again. I'm struck by his boldness in speaking and not waiting— tell the truth, then let the echoes do the work.
Beauty and truth— companions from here to Kingdom come.
Even the grasshopper seems to understand.
Click. Up. Moving on. Trust.
And between all of it—
space.
Wide, sunlit, unoccupied space.
The kind that only exists here and anywhere there is desert. Around the globe but this one is mine, today.
I stand until my thoughts up. Click. Moving on. Standing still—
At the edges of Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, stone lies where it came to rest.
Dark, porous, each piece holding the memory of heat, each surface fixed in the moment of its becoming.
Across the field— fragments.
Lifted, scattered, set in place by force and the long settling after.
In the slow passage of it— through wind, through cold, through the steadfast work of seasons— a different order solidifies.
Between the stones— vibrant lime green equally brilliant yellow
Pushing through fissures, rooted in spaces of fracture, drawing from elements above and below, rising from where the earth was devastated.
A bird alights on a twisted branch.
And we, who come searching for shape, stumble through the surface, reading the ground for what we imagine, while beneath our steps roots move among the stone, threading through death and life.
On the surface— rock, jagged silent warnings emanating from frozen faces.
Beneath— a rumbling of breath, forced tilling turned to growth, through time's signature shocks of courage.
The land holds both together, dividing nothing, choosing neither.
In the keeping of it, in the settling of what has been cast down and the quiet rising that follows, God gives:
what remains where it has fallen, set in the ground as it came to rest—
and what takes root within the break, drawing life from the opened places—
and healing— not as the return of what was, but as something new set among the fractures, color rising—but more, the story not only of wreckage but of life where the ground came apart.
Iris Lennox 