Here's to Rebecca Seiferle, poetry at the stops of the Tucson Streetcar, and sweet monsoon rain!

Jatropha cardiophylla

Limberbush

I must have passed by a hundred times and not noticed

these spindly twigs, drought and cold deciduous,

among the desert's scraggle… so what

if I know baskets were made by the Seri people

the splints sewn into a star

the blood color of these branches

or that Jatropha cardiophylla lives in colonies

spread by underground runners and that its sap

stains the fingers red or that it bears a single female flower,

a three seeded fruit? Knowledge

is not the encounter with the thing itself,

so at the margins of the the monsoon season,

caught in a basket of words,

I am stuck on the limberbush, searching

for its white to pale yellow blooms, to see

knowingly this one small life

like all the nondescript small creatures,

including human beings

that the eyes have to open to find, so

I can bow to it and acknowledge

its small loves opening the shining

heart-shaped leaves with their crenellated margins

and red petioles . . .how radiant

is the ordinary, overlooked, the never-seen

when branches that seem dead or stricken

leaf and flower in the rain.

Rebecca Seiferle

After the lovely morning rain in the Sonoran desert - this blue-gray day calls for some Noelle Kocot ~

The Blue

How often we say things we don't mean
Fully, with our full selves.  But this is
All right, since we cannot make sense of
The growing weeds, the things that go
Where only blue travels.  A hymn rings
Out.  The wavery wind blows.  I don't
Want to sound coy or even ridiculous,
But after all, the azure of a face drawn
In sand at the edge of a sea is my own
Two deaths.  The first one happened 7
Years ago.  I've grown all new cells since
Then.  The next will happen at some point,
But I'm not worried, not hardly.  Is this a
Message?  A message to whom?  Is it
To you, who polishes me like a pearl?
Humanity is more than that, I think, and
Now the light has spoken.  It's time
To carry the weight of the day, and wait
For sleep to come again, as it does,
Flat and ridiculous over the whole blue land.  

Noelle Kocot

***

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait        Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?               —Elizabeth Bishop A paper hat transmutes so easily into a paper boat, But this doesn't mean that the boat is somehow inferior. I was a child once. I saw into the deep, blue interior Of the number four, which is the Holy Spirit who makes All things possible and all things matter. All things I thought of then, Even the letter Q without the U behind it. And things just settled. There was no need to hope For any more, except maybe a cigarette, and the thing about cigarettes Is that one after another, they're the same. Meanwhile, soap Dissolves much more quickly than it did in 1970, The year that embarrasses me most with its promise of tall, Musky, balding Gordons and Dons, with orange, palm-tree expressions, And women in short, pregnant dresses and ash-black falls. It will take a freighter Of Coppertone to tan them all. Somewhere a library still swells with bean- Bag chairs and barefoot, dozing hippies too hooked On Marx and Keynes to notice that Miss Breen Has in fact been able to write her roommate (friend, I presume) Into her will with little fuss from the family. Anyway, I hope I've seen The last of those backwards Fools, except of course for kind-eyed Miss Breen And her companion, who are coming This Thursday for a good, strong cup of German tea. Hopefully, that rag Of a newspaper will give us something to talk about before We sip. Wait a minute! I must buy some Black Flag So that the roaches spare our Lorna Doones! O world, In all my years of comprehension I will never understand their synchronous, immediate Flocking in bright formation, then halting suspension Beneath the sink when I turn on the fluorescent, kitchen, warehouse- Like, blaring light just before sun-up. The blue Spirit that I once saw radiating out from everything, like a tourist In a too-young country, has gone home. And yes, I love you, Yes, if to love implies more guilt than one alone can harbor. So come, the scenery Is fine here. The wild blue light still crosses the mountains Now and then, somewhere a number four sprouts through the           rough greenery. Noelle Kocot