Prayer in the Winter Desert

My hands glow blue
in light struck from red

rock. Sky-parched,
I stumble, bleached

by dark, bent from reading,
deaf with rain.

A raven’s croak
echoes off canyon walls.

In snow-melt air,
the smell of pine rings.

Blue-gray junipers jump
from crevices, hanging on.

Nopales, hungry, spread
their blue-green palms.

Light is writing
white-gold letters on cloud.

See me,
blue-white sun,

fill me, too,
chlorphyll me.

First published in Cider Press Review, January 3, 2018.