The Heart's Resilience The Heart's Resilience by Gloria Bird Morning sun skims through the cool, dry air sears the sleepy eyes torn from the rim of dream as spiders build their webs across our doorways, crickets come in through the cracks of windowsill, and mice dance boldly in the hallway predicting the coming of an early winter. A field of chamisal in the foreground tempers the impoverished memory of the desert's withholding hand feeds my hungry spirit. The arroyo empty of rainwater wakes alive with good luck lizards leaving their imprint in swirled sand.
Cactus plants guard the parameters of our existence, run the fenceline.
The pinnacles of earth formations rise eyelevel in the distance, shift our senses. I am returned here twenty years later with two young sons not yet a part of the memory of my daughter's birth in this land, whose presence we feel still as native wildflowers bloom freely occupying each field of vision in variegated yellows against the sienna earth, the color of their skins. In the early morning, we sit on our verandah on freezing benches facing the rising sun, the powdered air rough with pollens. At our backs the western slope is streaked by dark rains and slow cloud shadows. Somewhere on the edge of hearing a lonely puppy yelps to be let in.