CACTUS

The desert has kept its promise of peace

to the son who accepts the havoc

his presence brings to hostile ground:  

wind-scattered rubbish, metal scrap,

rusted and twisted beguiling shapes,

and the off road vehicle trails

across heat-cracked gullies of creosote

and boulders spewed by infrequent storm.

The place he comes to isn’t named

for divine encounters, and he wrestles

not with angels but with less remote

forefathers, who vie with him for the red

flower atop the cactus barrel.

They claim resilient ornament

to justify the pain they bring to others.

The son hears his father pronounce him worthless

knowing that the grandfather listens

and confirms the judgment;

the evidence runs through him, failure

to go it on his own and make with little parts

a semblance of the greater whole

and he within its emptiness.  On the night 

his silenced mother tossed her mind in

with the screech and howl of dark distances,

she made her final argument

in his defense, entreating

an inscrutable issuance of old suitors

and fresh rivals that flapped for her.

On the clothesline stretched outside her home,

ghosts way back in her inoperable brain

threatened and cajoled, and like her husband, 

were most severe when feeling

came before them stammering, and the cold

chill of stars feathered fright, speaking strangely.