In Sabino Canyon a towering
prickly pear cactus leans dying.
In her macabre gown, heat-roasted black,
tousled dry paddles droop thornless,
a mass of dark peeling hands.
On the ground, fallen skeletons
shed their riven skins by the hundreds,
reveal cargo of tiny wooden-lace trees.
In nocturnal cool these brittle forests
marry the sand.
Higher above the sad skirt: the wonder! Branching green
a resolute girth of living scaffold crowns with bees,
hardy prickles wink gold among orange and magenta fruit.
She is figging! in this sanctuary of pollination,
in this fierce place of subtraction.