Echinopsis pachanoi

Tell me from your mouth what can be saved.

We cut apart the cactus with a sharp knife,

alcohol, mid-drift of thorn. The weather’s turned

to a mist of heat. Awake, asleep.

The stems want only a bite of water

or rain aslant. Today’s work

is dry weeds, a roadrunner slicking past yucca.

Sometimes when I feel betrayed, I need to lean

against the desert, to remember desire

isn’t the end. Three-awn, kinnickinnik,

pine-drop seed stalks, the metronome

of sky, steady along.

Am I missing the answer: light

through its rotations?

Before I get old, I’ll learn how it sings

nettle, scale, the spoon-breath

of dust-eddy, sip and remnant.

I will have seen a whole translucence.

The cactus insists on blooming. From joints,

eyeholes. Meaning, what splits from this

gives me the fortune to open

in welcome. I must want

what is empty. Map it, mention it, talk

all day. The month folds its tired self over me, clasps

without moving. I kneel

on the ground which keeps on

surviving. Above me wings with their rituals,

a sequence of hours, chance. All it takes

is summer again. Another morning.

What it hasn’t been.