EDITOR'S NOTE: We occasionally receive poetry submissions from our readers, and while we no longer publish those submissions in the magazine, we occasionally feature them on our blog. Mark Cooney recently sent us this one. Thanks for sharing, Mark.
Thunderbird Park - an Evening Lesson
By Mark Cooney, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Sonoran Desert
To some desolate and bleak
To be conquered, overcome
But it signals with its beauties and frustrations
To mankind
Palo Verde's green tangled serpents
Foreground to sun's scarlet farewell
Yonder rough hewn peaks
Nearby crags of slate gray rocks
Look scorched from desert kiln
Behind last light illuminates
Sandpaper desert peaks
Amid electric buzz of cicadas
Desert breeze pulses
Like breath of a dragon
The city encroaches
On this desert preserve
People settle here by millions
But the desert reacts subtly
Beyond its fiery rebuttal
Palo Verde, like brood of snakes
Fights against the workman's saw
Somber rock walls say
"Try to conquer me"
And cicada's electric buzz says
"Do not bother me"
The desert cries like you or I
"I want to live - to fight another day"
Thunderbird Park, Phoenix, Arizona 7/2005