Stella's Garden

by koeeoaddi

What she tells us
the afternoon she gathers her
wagon full of cholla and mesquite
branches is: listen
there's a sound the desert makes,
like garden chimes, atonal and hollow,
Absence, the sound
after sound

We only hear a cactus wren
above the scratch of quail on clay
Two coyotes sigh and circle home
to ask their brutal
twilight riddle:
who will mistake desire
for lies we tell
in our own vacant dialect?

The answer is
javalinas — eight of them
barge through Stella's chicken wire
knock over geraniums
root up her favorite
night blooming cereus
in a shuffle of grunts
and smashed terra cotta

By morning
her garden is an elegant profusion
of regret. The fur and bones
her shovel finds
underneath the creosote bush
were simply too new to read
this thistled parable
or, thirsty for shade

lay down just long enough
to be sung to sleep.