Tension becomes unbearable,
she is shivering apart, restless, cornered,
attuned; painfully, needfully attuned.

Endless sameness of desert days,
sun-scorched, heat-kissed melodrama
of spring’s crafty summer camouflage,
has tasted a hint of monsoon moisture.
Shadowed clouds had been flirting
with arid hills of creosote and cacti
earlier in the haze-filled day,
part ennui, part smokiness
from higher mountain’s flaming madness.
Lizards wag their tails knowingly,
winds whisk and twist into ballets of air,
bombarding the senses with echoing future.

Regardless of nature-made promises,
she hoses drooping flowers, vibrating, anxious,
dust devil suddenly chokes; painfully chokes her hopes.

Desert fuzz rips from its branched origins,
flows frantically and smatters it’s kernel of life,
into hair and mouth, eyes and ears,
palm fronds wickedly clap their approval
with windy invitation to belie hefty weight, and dance,
cats arch and belittle gravity, chicks fluff and squawk,
flowers lift a bit, in false shower's stay of life,
shimmering heat relents, for a breath or two,
then clamps deliriously, chuckling with fiery glee.

Twanging intensifies, yet eludes her grasp,
brief storm has passed, without satisfaction, fractured,
nerves ache; essence painfully aches with unfulfilled avowals.

Passion slowly dies.
Waiting to revive.
In the next storm.
Of hope.
She will live.
For a while.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 6/16/03