Attention

Home— the place of attention.
Where you know that swirl in the road
marks the dust bath of a jackrabbit.
Or that a particular Canyon Wren ends
her descending aria with a startling yee-haw.

That on our longest of days,
the sun retires on the breast
of the northwest horizon
and begins a steady southern swing
to the little knoll where we mark its winter twin.

Our lives held in this gentle cup,
palmed within an arc of light.

First appeared in Canary (Winter 2018-19)

Queen Yucca

A tree in the treeless desert,
I am landmark to the lost.

General Store to the needy.
Bestowing fruit, water,

poultice, soap,
fiber, needles, combs, or rope.

I am apartments—
shelter for oriole, cactus wren,

flicker, falcon.
Home to the Swainson’s hawk,

with his monk’s hood, and
mighty migration.

My tap root, fathoms deep, yet
shallow roots grab each drop.

And yes, I’ve made a pool of shade—
Come, rest. Step in and bathe.

“Queen Yucca” from We Make a Tiny Herd (Main Street Rag, 2019).
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Happiest on a tractor named Mabel (a muse of 55 horsepower) Lucy Griffith lives on a ranch beside the Guadalupe River near Comfort, Texas. Her first collection of poems We Make a Tiny Herd was published by Main Street Rag as a finalist in their poetry book contest. She also has work in the anthologies Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, Weaving the Terrain: 100-word Poems of the Southwest and The Enchantment of the Ordinary, as well asCanary and Avocet journals. She is co-editor of Echoes of the Cordillera: Attitudes and Latitudes Along the Great Divide, an ekphrastic anthology. She is the winner of the Donald Everett Axinn Returning Contributor Award in Poetry for the 2019 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.