Observations and Insights on the Nature of Things
This monthly column features brief essays, poems, poetic micro essays and photography
by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico.
Look for a new post every first Friday.
Relate – Ocher – Demarcate
Let us begin with the opening lines
of T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land.”
After all, it is April.
1. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”
Eliot wrote the epic poem
while his wife was slowly
recovering from the 1918
pandemic, The Spanish Flu.
We can all relate, can we not?
Pandemics demarcate
transitional zones in history,
not unlike the way April
demarcates the annual
transition zone of spring.
Here in the Southwest,
it’s excessive wind
that taunts winter saying,
No more! Well,
except for this corridor
of blinding dust storms.
A yellow ocher haze
obscures the world,
while we yearn
for the rains that pass
us by, flying to the east,
or holding to the west coast,
rather than drenching
the oft misunderstood
as desiccated “waste land”
of arid Chihuahuan and
Sonoran desert soil.
This year, March
may surpass April
in cruelty, with sixty
miles per hour winds
raising dust and gypsum
into dense shrouds
obscuring mountains
and dimming sunlight.
Maybe April will be kinder,
bringing in the relief
of precipitation.
Though around here,
lilacs are improbable!
Still, the “dull roots”
of yucca, cholla, mesquite,
creosote, agave and
the majestic saguaro
await a wet deluge.
Even as we wait,
hoping it is not in vain,
for the detritus
of our own pandemic
to be swept away
by some evidence
of an optimistic future,
as yet invisible,
but nonetheless desired.
Let us remember
that “The Waste Land”
concludes with a blessing
for inner peace.
Shantih Shantih Shantih
Photo credit: “Prayer for Rain,” Patrick Markham, 2023
Eve West Bessier is a poet laureate emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico; and of Davis and Yolo County, California. She served on the steering committee for the Southwest Word Fiesta, and has been a festival presenter. Eve is a retired social scientist, educator, and voice coach. She is a published author, jazz vocalist, photographer and nature enthusiast currently living in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
