Awakening on pine needles,
comforted by filtered sun,
warm serape.

Voluptuous boulders crowning,
breezy lullabies
drift down.

Bird watchers paradise
under cottony clouds
weathered ponderosa.

Songs, calls, wood tapping,
white shoulders, red breast,
yellow finch.

June bugs buzzing, snapping,
like electric power lines
in September.

—Kathryn Keve

DESERT SPRING
Luscious leisurely spring sparks Irish greens,
yellow shoulders of desert sunflowers, golden slopes of poppies.

Softer choirs of purple lupine and wild heliotrope
brightened by bursts of fuchsia hedgehogs.
Chaparral shining in the sun.
A desert chorale in tones of bloodstone, obsidian, and jasper.

Gila woodpeckers announce spring across the valley
in full-throated vibratos.
Courting quail call as they flurry before horses and hikers.

Rain and more rain has Bartlett Lake brimming.
An April full moon slathers rippling water
with silver and bronze silk.
Sky and water.

Four-wheel driving, we stop, sit, and eat, taking in the moon.

Do I believe in signs?
Vultures near Four Peaks soar overhead
as they inspect the glow of my new coral Amigo.
I find three lucky pennies.
Do we get to choose?

Life is a gift; endings are certain.
We decide how to live.

Flowers blooming until spent, fed by rain, sun,
more rain and more sun.
Cactus blossoms pushing—ready to burst open,
transitions, letting go.
Down to the Vishnu schist.

Reading the signs...
Ripe for renewal
Permission to bloom
Sing my song

If you're an artist in your soul,
every day you don't paint,
you are a day closer to the end...

—Kathryn Keve