by Russ Vanheel

Created on: June 22, 2008

Desert Bloom

I've worn her vagabond
missionary robes all frayed and ragged
that gave definitive shape to her being
captured through the gusty wind she walked against
every time it caught her...
a gypsy moth with butterfly wings
in a desperate search for heavens gate
with a constant full moon disposition
that gleamed from fixed canyon eyes

and how beautiful she was
this wise angel child shining its likeness

through every captured mood and becoming
the always blooming rose that was her face
no matter what the climate...
and the perfumed sweetness she offered
with a Springtime fragrance escaping sunbeams
providing warmth regardless of black clouds
that lingered like death above her

these overgrown wooded pathways
leading from lifeless desert painted visions
whose sand she desperately built castles with
and waited impatiently for an ocean tide
to come and wash them away...
claustrophobic and groping, incapable of reaching
to revive the lush beauty of her untended garden
whose wilted flowers were overshadowed by weeds
and that healing sunlight couldn't touch

engulfed by distant skyline fences
while hopelessly searching for an open gate
makes one restless, so restless, and surrendered
like those murdered guards at our feet
too often inhabited by the dead space of our world(s)
until finally redeemed by a guardian angel
that heals an affliction of gusted sand blindness
and causes desert bloom...then in a captured glimpse
I see that blooming angel has her face....

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