Arizona (a love letter)

Author's note: This is from a poetry series I write and post on my author website blog, called "Notes on a Bar Napkin." For more info, go to http://jenlynnanderson.com/blog.

I will never forget
These sweet nights
These nights of rhythm
of rhythm and sway –
The music is under my skin
Under my skin and in
my bones –
The music is permanent
because of you.
You grasp a piece
of my heart
My heart and you never knew
you held it.
And this
This heart bursts
Under the haze
The cloying haze
of a desert summer
night
And I reach
I reach
So far
So hard
And never
Can never
Will never grasp
What this all meant.
But I love
I love
You
all the same.

Are There Hippies in the Desert?

Minnesota weeps as I leave treadmarks on her back.
Crossing the border,
Double-crossed for a Southwestern lover.

My heart is heavy but I've been here too long.

The road is waving wildly
and I'm adrift on the limber asphalt
as it roils and turns on its endless
headlong journey to
anywhere.

I've seen twenty-
six snowy Novembers
but--
dammit--
this time I'll eat tofurkey in eighty
degrees.

I've spent almost ten
thousand nights
dreaming of lush African hills,
steaming islands of the Caribbean,
buzzing lights of NYC,
and most recently--
the spiky, alien mountains of Arizona--

My world could be limitless.
But there are risks, too:
John McCain could be my neighbor.

I could get mighty sick of cacti.

I could be the only ass in a sea of
red elephants,
thirsty for hippie blood.

A kamikaze believer in liberal thought,
the rattlesnakes could eat me alive.

But...

But.

No buts.

I will do this.

Will wake up to the desert,
see the sun in wintertime.

Will display Obama bumper stickers
on my three-ring binders
with pride
(and will ignore the jeers).

Will somehow meld myself into
the life that I crave.
A life that sparks and spins on its own,
where I am only a passenger in the
glorious
crazy
mess--
a life that is real.

Real.

For now...