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It’s Poetry Friday! You’ll find this week’s roundup of poetry goodness with Jan Godown Annino at Bookseed Studio. Jan is awash in the joy of seeds and shares some inspiration with us in the poetry of Sharon Lovejoy. Jan is the author of  the award-winning
She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader


The prompt was to write an elegy…

     Having never written an elegy, I spent some time looking at  traditional versions. I was leaning toward the lighter more humorous samples Marcie pointed us to, until I ran into this on my morning walk…  

song for the saguaro

gentle giant in repose
weathered witness
to ten thousand suns
your graceful arms still,
steadfast     to the end

renowned icon of arid land
you demur:
sweet sweat dripped from the Creator’s brow
the pup survived, thrived
gift of a nurse tree’s shield

you gave flesh and fruit and rib

cortege of gilded flicker,
purple martin, long-nosed bat
leave a pod of gratitude
my desert prayer:

Spirit of your people,
carry you home.

©2023, Patricia J. Franz

The O’odham peoples of the Sonoran Desert have long revered the saguaro cactus
as a being with personhood.

For more information on the rights-of-nature movement: https://emergencemagazine.org/op_ed/rights-of-nature-at-the-border/

and

https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/saguaro-free-of-the-earth/

A saguaro (sa·wa·ro) is a tree-like cactus that can grow to 65 feet and sprout candelabra-esque arms. But they grow  v e r y  s l o w l y – like an inch or few per year. Typically those upright arms don’t appear till the saguaro is at least 70-80 years old.

I imagine the saguaro I came upon may have been 150 -200 years old. The photo at left is not the same one, though it is similar in size and arms. It gives you a sense of just how big they are. 

I walk that path numerous times over the course of a week. When did it die? Why did it fall? Something this size would surely have made a large noise. It barely broke apart. It seemed to have simply laid itself down.

 

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