Landscape with Saguaros
by Keith Ekiss
I.
My father takes a chainsaw to the limbs.
He's afraid the saguaro could die
prematurely, like a man, collapse,
crushing the gutter and unpaid roof.
Our house closes around the roots—
land becomes landscaping.
The blade's teeth tear into flesh,
the motor's pitch dampens an octave.
He divides the trunk, mostly water.
Does he think I would spare it?
The boy who won't kill spiders,
the one who tries to save what's lost.
Pickax, poison, hacksaw, knife.
He's never taught me the dangerous tools.
He's never taught me the dangerous tools.
My minor chores: weed and mow,
I drain and clean the swimming pool—
the motor pumps like a jittery heart.
Across the lawn, I guide a blue hose,
water bursts out, wastes into desert.
Yesterday, he returned from the doctor.
A stent props the artery. He'll survive
longer than his father, brother, sister.
Don't worry, he tells me, I'll be fine.
I'm not ready for the day without him,
knowing his heart works harder than mine.
There's no argument, no alternative:
nothing but a heartbeat's needed to live.
Not even a heartbeat's needed to live.
The hummingbird on the ceiling beam
isn't dead or asleep. Blurry wings
snapped tight, a paper fan. To the bird
our house appears an accident—
flowerless aviary without any sugar.
My father, patient, climbs the ladder,
places the hummingbird's torpid body
in his palm, strokes the throat patch,
the gorget, muscle that should quiver.
Through an eyedropper, he feeds it
maraschino cherry juice. The dormant
heart accelerates, feathers hover.
He holds what I'm afraid to touch.
He killed what I'm afraid to touch.
The rattle sounds like camouflage—
mesquite pods shaken by wind.
I heard it ticking beneath the bed,
lost in the coolness of our house.
Better to find it flat, belly to dust,
the Bible says, not coiled like rope.
Bullwhip lightning. Seducer; Medusa.
My skin doesn't leave a hunting scent.
The carpet crawled with cruelty.
I recoiled. Slitting the body lengthwise,
he skinned it, hung the oily slough—
skeletal and waxy in garage light.
The desert, he warned, is never safe.
I know it—the desert is never safe.
Walking past the canal, I find a skull.
A hunter's warning or a hiker's gift?
It's light in my hand, not human.
Jawbone longer than the brain cavity,
teeth grist visible like fur.
Bone tissue flakes away as I rub it.
The skull isn't marble like I thought:
it's supple, closer to wood than stone.
By its teeth I learn the animal name,
smaller than I believed for its ferocity.
I won't dislodge an eyetooth trophy—
I leave what's dead unshrouded.
Nothing that dies here needs burial.
Nothing that dies here needs burial.
I stare outside where the saguaro
had been, remember a photograph
he'd taken, years ago, two saguaros
back-to-back, an old married couple.
He angled the lens toward the sun,
haloing the shorter one. Radiant
through dying light, intelligent,
spines lit up, like graying hair.
I stood in the darkroom beside him—
chemicals smelled sweet like poison.
Shaping the gray tone, the paper grain,
white flowers bloomed before my eyes.
An image he fixed that's since disappeared.
Our backyard saguaro has disappeared—
my father hauled the wreckage to the dump.
I switch and wander through mud-soaked hills.
Early June, white saguaro flowers
trumpet after rain, here in what remains
my childhood desert, eaten by rabbits,
bitten by Mexican long-tongued bats.
I lean close to the red fruit of summer,
sticky infinity of seeds: a saguaro
newly fallen. I want to think lightning
struck it, better death than rot from frost.
The skeleton works toward the soil.
Of many ways to die, this is one:
my father takes a chainsaw to the limbs.