He walks along the desert floor under the noonday sun
Looking for stray lizards wiggling in the sand.
The searing heat cauterizes the open sores on his back
As he bends over looking for the sleek, sinuous reptiles.
The stark luminescent glow of the sand drains the landscape of color,
A thin palette for the blanched diorama roiling with the business of life.
An iguana stands guard while the Saguaro cactus reaches out to grasp
Friend or foe in an embrace of a love lost to the heat of the endless day.
The coral snake rings what’s left of a dying Mojave aster looking for lunch,
Perhaps finding a pack rat or succulent cottontail to complete his midday menu.
As he sits among the yucca and cacti, he glories in the completeness of the
Life cycles before him; he revels in the beauty of it all, finding peace in meridian slumber.
**
The sores fester, oozing with the liquid of unhealed memory,
Their detritus evoking the long forgotten cause of caustic pain.
They sear his heart and lungs until he can find no rest but that found
In the middle of a scream for mercy: “A-h-h-h” he cries to whatever
God he has chosen for this episode in his suffering which has no end
And no beginning. “A–h-h-h, let it stop,” but there is no answer
‘cept the pain that pierces his pores to their roots.
He attempts to reach back to locate the source of his torture,
But finds his arms pinned to an unseen balustrade,
Hanging midst the heat waves emanating from the desert floor.
Looking around, he sees in the middle of his hand a gigantic
Needle from the Saguaro cactus he had embraced just the minute before.
Then comes the laughter: deep, haunting, terrible laughter.
Rumbling through the varicosity of his soul’s tendrils,
Leeching his strength so that he can no longer find the will
To battle the enemy of his spirit’s vitality.
Hanging there, in front of the laughing Saguaro, he fingers the coral snake
Necklace that encircles his throat, picking at fangs like toothpicks after bar-b-que.
He seeks forgotten courage while reaching for the Saguaro’s spike, grappling
With his newly remembered past. Pulling on the spike evokes such laughter from
Our tall and imposing friend that cactus wrens, ravens and turkey vultures
Abandon their perches to find solace in less turbulent mesas.
But the laughter soon turns to sullen silence as the spike comes free and
The man, restraints at last released, descends softly to the ground.
Removing the reptilian choker, he milks the snake’s dentures,
Pouring the loathsome venom on his back’s decaying sores
With a potion wrought with such corruption that his
Wounds are matched measure for ghastly measure
By the balm of hard-won expiation for those transforming sins
That became as cancers on his lonely soul.
As the bile colored venom enters those sores, they are washed clean of corruption,
Free of the infected shame that was the root of the virulent decay.
The spent liquids evaporate in the sands,
Imbibed by the thirst of the sin-eating arroyo.
***
The fierce sun descends past the meridian,
Shadows lengthening past the iguana’s tail.
The titian sand resonates with life within it, giving a
Home to hare, raven, hummingbird, javelina, pack rat.
As the coral snake lies sated in the shadow of a yucca plant,
The Saguaro cactus embraces the end of another day.
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