Desert travel
by Gail
Survival in the desert
sometimes calls for desperate measures:
traveling through the abrupt night,
eating strange roots,
drinking from the bared cactus,
the delicate wet flesh.
The stripped plant
recovers its armor,
and the discarded pieces
birth new sentinels,
vulnerable as all living things.
The desert endures unchanged,
with its dry love manifesting both
as the sharp flash of the machete
and the thick protective spines.
The traveler emerges burnt, exhausted, alive.
