Poetry Of Spirit And Light: A Penny For Your Thoughts

The prairie hardly shows signs of its annual resurrection. She struggles to shake off the disruption of her routine by drought. Scant blushes of green recede into a color palette of freeze-dried straw. Merciless winds torment her soils and denizens. She is beyond thirsty. Her cracked and spalled countenance remains a grim reminder of her hankering for water. Even hardy yuccas hold back their flower stalks. Without the golden blooms of these iconic lámparas de dios and countless other wildflowers the Llano Estacado will traipse into summer as a bleak expanse of dust and straw.

"That's enough melancholy and somber dirges," whispers the prairie wind.

Cooper and I make tracks. He still has a lot of puppy spirit. When the occasional Jack Rabbit doesn’t oblige with a game of chase, he’ll grab anything not tied down to instigate a pursuit from me. I always oblige. After numerous passes in a game of keep-away, Cooper relishes his success in retaining control of his trophy stick. To the victor go the spoils.

I continue my sojourn down a dry, dusty ranch road. It’s been a relatively snow and rain free Winter. Llano Estacado trekkers and ranchers only have distant memories of muddy red dirt roads. It’s hard to picture slipping and sliding in mud on today’s passage way. I long for summer rains. We head home.

In stark contrast to the open prairie, our town is an oasis of spring dreams and renewal. I lie down on our back yard lawn and enjoy the ambrosia of apple and pear blossoms against an azure canopy of New Mexico sky. Cooper takes a few minutes to rid his coat of trail dust with an ecstatic roll on lawn turf. He stops for a few moments and gazes pensively. “A penny for your thoughts, my friend,” I whisper. Then I realize his stare is more appropriately scrutiny of a young, male Monarch butterfly feasting on the nectar of pear blossoms. I take the sighting as an augury of life and resurrection.