Blog Archives
October: A Wilderness Walk
October. The month of the dead and the dying.
As I shuffle through the arroyo, I keep dropping to my knees. An onlooker might mistake me for a pilgrim making my painful way to Lourdes. But the healing I seek cannot be found at some distant, holy shrine. It is here in the dust at my feet: palo verde twigs snapped off by windstorms; brown clumps of parched grasses; and small stones quickly losing their warmth as the daylight fades.
I pause before some tattered sunflowers, bleached and bitten by the unforgiving desert sun, to quench my thirst. Words from a letter written long ago come to mind: “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are…” (1 Corinthians 1:28, Revised Standard Version).
Low and despised is nature’s detritus in the wilderness, but it heals my battered spirit as I kneel in awe and wonder before it.
While three crows argue,
I gulp tea from my thermos—
autumn’s first chill wind.
Presence
Daybreak in the Sonoran Desert, Yuma County, Arizona.
October morning—
an owl that no one can see
makes its presence known.
Haiku and photo © 2018 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More SkyWatch Friday
More Midweek Motif at Poets United: “Owl”
Thread
Saguaro cactus at dawn, Sonoran Desert, Southern Arizona
October morning
barely enough light to thread
saguaro needles
Haiku and photo © 2015 by Magical Mystical Teacher
Fire
Sunset, Sonoran Desert, Southern Arizona
October evening—
the house of desolation
burning without fire
Text and photo © 2014 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More SkyWatch Friday
More Carpe Diem: “Fire”
