No anxious poets walk along the desert paths
Worried that beauty may not thrive.
The noonday heat of summer requires
Both penance and deceit from all.

The young saguaro knows to shelter in the shade,
Loving the tree which gives it life,
Till breaking out above the host
It kills by poisoning the roots.

The Gambel's quail, a clockwork toy
With plumed hat nodding like a lure
Above its head, herds
Its little family to the shade.

Here we learn tricks to outwit the sun
Stratagems that took a million years
Bailiwicks defined within a code
All learned at a heavy price.

Here beauty lurks, form, color
Shape and power and we are one
With countering the sun,
The hide toughened, the skin fragile.