Remembering Tucson

The great saguaro and the crosses stood together,

The only objects I could see through my tears,

In the bleak desert brown.

Or were the crosses olive green?

They said there was new life here, in spring.

Fourteen trees of life and countless painful memories,

Baring their sharp, unforgiving thorns to any flesh they meet.

They seem to find me unaware, they find my hands, my legs, I bleed.

Or are these crosses of shame and symbols of death in this dry place?

I'm confused, aroused, ashamed.

Crucifixion in the desert, rattlesnakes, wild pigs, sharp rocks

And the oppressive heat. Death is close, I fear.

But go again to walk the path, I'm compelled to return.

They take his clothes, strip him bare.

There is no protection from the scorching mind's eye here.

Jesus falls the first time and I feel his pain.

I trip along the gravel path, wrench my knee, biting down my tears.

They put the cross on him, 'carry it yourself,' they say.

I feel its weight.

He falls again, the women try to help him,

Death comes slowly here.

They nailed him to the cross, I cried out in pain,

For myself, for him, for our death.

Will God really wipe away every tear?

Later, God is absent, it seems.

The tomb is empty and there is no rejoicing, only deep wells of sadness

in my soul.

And then they suddenly appear, or have they been here all along?

The bright green buds of prickly pear,

the flaming red ocotillo

Call me to them.

The sharpest, strongest thorns of all, it seems.

The most seductive,

'touch me', they say.

Feel the pain, and live.

a lost love poem, April 1998, at Picture Rocks Retreat Center