Counting What the Cactus Contains

rogersCactus3.jpg

Elf owl, cactus wren, fruit flies incubating

in the only womb they'll ever recognize.

Shadow for the sand rat, spines and barbary 

ribs clenched with green wax. seven thousand 

thorns, each a water slide, a wooden tongue

licking the air dry.


Inside, early morning mist captured intact,

the taste of drizzle sucked, and sunsplit whistle

of the red-tailed hawk at midnight, rush

of the leaf-nosed bat, the soft slip of fog 

easing through sand held in tandem.


Counting, the vertigo of its attitudes

across evening; in the wood of its latticed bones

the eye sockets of every saint of thirst; in the gullet 

of each night-blooming flower--the crucifix

of the arid.


In its core, a monastery of cells, a brotherhood

of electrons, a column of expanding darkness

where matter migrates and sparks whorl

and travel has no direction, where distance

bends backward over itself, and the ascension

of Venus, the stability of Polaris, are crucial.


The cactus, containing

whatever can be said to be there,

plus the measurable tremble of its association

with all those who have been counting.

Pattiann Rogers has published fourteen books of poetry, most recently Quickening Fields from Penguin/Random House, 2017. Read more.


“Counting What the Cactus Contains” was previously published in The Expectations of Light by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

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