The Desert Comments

Wow! What a vivid evocation of the desert! I've spent time in a desert, not as long as I wanted, but long enough to appreciate your poem. It was the desert outside Tucson Arizona. At the time I was furiously reading, re-reading and re-re-reading Garcia Lorca whose poems spoke to me in the clear desert air. I only wrote one poem BETWEEN TUCSON AND PHOENIX. And this is the poem I wished I had written. You open with an expansive vista of the whole landscape which dwarfs people and animals. Then in the poem's center a stillness descends on the horse, the land, the tree, you and the reader. It's an exhilarating moment sustained. but it's the magic of the rainbow in the box - that metaphor for the desert's sudden blooming when rain comes that makes aware of the transience of the appearance of this setting which only seems to be eternal in its dryness.