Yucca Eulogy

Yucca Eulogy

Pointed, stiff and narrow, saw-like edges
Evergreen its clusters, never fading
With stems like wood and scaly wedges
Upon the windy desert floor, shading
The night lizard from the sun’s rays
Arms spreading like the biblical Joshua
A mantis prays,
                In the yucca of Chihuahua
Northern flickers excavate pervading

Nest holes into fibrous trunks, abodes
Built on speculation, temporary bird homes
Prickly dry houses shroud Sonoran toads
Where the preying snake slithers and roams
And the yucca moth moves from plant to plant
Like Peter Pan looking for lost children
And the fire ant
              Builds a massive pyramid in barren
Hardpan, paying homage to the queen’s new home

Termites, a construction cleanup crew
Consume fallen branches and trunks
Bell-shaped desert blooms, with blue
Hues radiate from the Columbian Monk’s
Soft petals as nightfall gently blankets the floor
And a nocturnal symphony begins to play
The Scorpion’s Score
               As night critters swing and sway
And day critters sleep in their desert bunks

As the music plays on the barren sand, man
Plays in a different band, a new incursion
Tourists, swarm like locusts in moving vans
From winter lands on holiday excursions
To buy a piece of paradise, a desert home
For ma and pa, a warm place to call their own.
From whispering domes
                 The Yucca cries, sighs and groans;
Disappears like Blackfeet, bisons and Persians