This red shelf
was a frame
and now it's a stage
upon which I stand
alongside the kind of beauty
usually reserved for dreams.
To gaze upon
is different than
to stand upon
so I suddenly feel the
weight of my own
inadequacy to speak.
Vibrant beauty steals the voice.
Perhaps that's why
our mouths naturally open
in the midst of awe.
The desert speaks for me.
"Sit down, city girl.
I'll take it from here."
And so I do.
Daypack on dirt.
Dust on denim.
Knees bent below me
like a student
poised to receive.
The lesson will be shown.
First
by what bends.
Just north of the wash
where blue grama,
needle grass,
and rabbitbrush
catch the last light
before the canyon
yawns and stretches
into the stars,
thousands of stems
lean west
all at once.
Then east.
Then halfway back,
seed heads suspended
between pull
and release.
A gust slips down
through juniper,
over shale,
between ocotillo thorns,
and the grasses
begin again.
Is it a dance?
A conversation?
Slow.
Loose-hipped.
Unashamed.
They dance
with the sky
like old lovers
who no longer
need music.
Only then
do I notice
who has been
watching
all along.
I'm not the only audience
here.
I'm no audience at all.
Nothing here is done
for me. I'm more like a
stow-away. But—
Sandstone
watches
keeping its spine.
Basalt
keeps its counsel.
A saguaro
holds both arms
where it left them
the year I was born,
suspending the final
clap.
From a distance
it looks
like contrast.
Up close,
it looks
more like trust.
One body
bending.
One body
witnessing.
One learning
through motion.
One learning
through stillness.
And the wind,
passing through them all,
enjoying the secrets
each one keeps—
the loyal wind knows
and withholds the details.
So I sit here,
dusty
studying the grasses' sway
while cactus,
juniper,
and cliff face
watch.
Where does this movement
exist
outside this valley?
Where
else does yielding
carry this much strength?
In kelp forests
thirty feet below
where sunlight cascades
and breaks?
In the chest
of a sleeping child
who trusts her blanket
to stand guard?
In the cottonwood,
the heron,
the mare,
the marriage,
the woman
who has learned
to stop fighting
every fall,
to stop tightening
at every pull,
to stop mistaking
the giving of weight
for the losing of self.
Perhaps languidity
has been here all along.
In muscle.
In memory.
In old roots
and older love.
In anything
that has learned
when to lean.
—Iris Lennox
Iris Lennox 