When morning comes
the ancestors in their frayed green coats
practice a silent tai chi
beneath a blue and white striated sky,
and here, there a stunted arm
lifts to greet the sun,
loops around the body in solo form
or extends outward, pushing hands.
The saguaros know the secrets
of the night, the infidelities of wind,
night’s mercy dance of death
and resurrection,
the murmurs of seven centuries.
In a stone chapel,
seven streaks of sunlight
stream through glass windows,
yellow the gray-brown walls:
spirits arrived from the other side.
A priest in a white robe
raises a wheat-colored wafer
broken in half, says “This is
Jesus.”
Where else did I expect to find him,
but in this sliver of dry bread,
the sun-washed stone, blowing dust,
the scourged and silent cacti?-- Judith Valente
Chicago
National Catholic Reporter, August 25, 2006
*The Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is a large, tree-sized cactus species, native to the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Slow growing, they may take as long as 75 years to put out a single side shoot, and may live for several hundred years.
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