Counting What the Cactus Contains
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.