Читать книгу Monica's Overcoat of Flesh - Geraldine Clarkson - Страница 14

I remember a time when the desert wasn’t metaphor,

when I was inserted there, for dry-throated reasons,

for years. A tree outside my cell leaved itself after rain

with lime parakeets and open-handed moths cloaking

the trunk with heavy wings of serge.

A decent desert, worth its salt. A sister-lined system.

The desert isn’t the desert unless it is too big for you.

This spiritual wilding lacks waymarkers and bounds.

And we were desert mothers and accomplices,

engendering puddle-babies and preening date palms;

aspersing them with quarter-buckets of day-old

well water, when it could be spared:

until they poked out flaring devils’ tongues—

which seemed to give a focus.