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Sonora Spring Haiku; poems & photographs
© Judith Lauter 2013 19 haiku + 1 longer poem, each paired with a color photo by JL 63 pp, 8.5" x 8.5" publisher: Xlibris, 2013 ebook & softcover formats order from Xlibris (softcover or ebook) ***Copies of selected photographs from this book can be purchased at FineArtAmerica.com, as greeting cards, prints, phone covers, etc.*** ***** Excerpts below include: Preface; Table of Contents; sample pages |
PREFACE
When I first saw the Sonoran desert, looking down from a jet plane slowly descending over Tucson in the fall of 1966, it was like coming home, in more ways than one. First, I was flying there to join my husband-to-be, to begin our life together. But also, my brain retained an imprint of desert from my early childhood years in the Texas hill country around Austin, where I was born. Bright stony ground, prickly pear, mesquite, clear hot days – they were in my blood.
Ken and I lived in Tucson for four years that first time, and the desert, its mountains, its spaces, its abundant and exotic life-forms, seemed like a paradise. When we reluctantly left to continue with graduate school, we swore to return ASAP. Though "as soon" became "whenever," somehow lengthening into 15 years, we did return in the 1980s, and the experience was coming home a second time. But a life in Tucson for us was not to be, and a short six years later we had to leave once again. (see note 1, below)
Then in spring 2013, almost 50 years from the first time we saw Sonora, when a friend and his wife told us they had recently bought a winter home in Tucson and that we could use it for a visit, we jumped at the chance. Arriving in April, we spent the time in and around Tucson, re-mapping the desert-that-is onto the desert-remembered –"filling in the pixels," as Ken put it – and re-discovering the amazing distinctiveness, like another planet, of the grand Sonoran desert.
We stayed from mid-April into mid-June, during the three months the Tohono O'odham call Uam Masad ("desert-in-bloom month"), U'us Wihogdag Masad ("month to gather beans; time of hunger"); and Ha:san Bak Masad ("month to gather saguaro fruit") -- (note 2). It was a wonderful time to be in northern Sonora: yolk-yellow palo verdes, cactus flowers of all hues, baby birds and animals under every mesquite.
The haiku (note 3) and photographs in this book reflect what we experienced during that all-too-brief time, feeling the days go slowly by from dawn to dark, driving out into the desert and mountains, watching with older eyes, listening with older ears, drinking it all in.
I hope those who live in Sonora will find this short account of a desert spring familiar, and that those who live elsewhere will gain a brief glimpse of its power, the vivid coming-to-life of this garden-of-deserts, set against a dramatic backdrop of rocks and space as old as the stars.
Notes to the Preface
1. The very prickly story of how and why we had to leave our Paradise Regained is recounted in Ken Lauter's Songs from Walnut Canyon (Xlibris, 2010), Postcards from Paradise (Xlibris, 2013), and Poet in Sonora; the Tucson years (in progress).
2. The Tohono O'odham names cited here for April, May, and June, along with their translations, are from the March 2013 edition of The Saguaro Sentinel; the official newspaper of Saguaro National Park, Darla Sidles, Park Superintendent (National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior). The Sentinel in turn credits R.B. Hanson and J. Hanson, Southern Arizona Nature Almanac (University of Arizona Press, Tucson AZ, 2003).
3. As in my first book of haiku (A Year of Haiku, Xlibris 2013), these poems are based on 19 syllables in 3 lines: 1st and 3rd lines, 7 syllables; 2nd line, 5 syllables; one ("Weaving in Sonora") is multiple-stanza, using the same structure. The Epilogue, "Visions: Driving up Kitt Peak," does not employ a haiku format.
-- JLL, Nacogdoches TX, July 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Morning Desert Roosters
Cool Mornings on the Porch
Cactus Wren's One-Way Conversation
Desert Voluptuary
In the Shade of a Prickly Pear
Weaving in Sonora
Midday
Outcomes
Winds Gusting to 40
Cinco de Mayo
Mesquite Growing Season
Desert Facts of Life
See Her, She's Gone
Afternoon
Sabino Canyon Creek
Sabino Canyon Cardinal
Geology Vista, Santa Catalina Mountains
In the Chiricahua Mountains
Evening
Glory Light
World Turned Away Now
Why the Desert Night Seems So Familiar
Epilogue
Visions: Driving up Kitt Peak
Notes (additional information regarding some topics mentioned in the poems:
Cinco de Mayo, Sabino Canyon, Chiricahua Mountains, Kitt Peak)
SAMPLE PAGES
When I first saw the Sonoran desert, looking down from a jet plane slowly descending over Tucson in the fall of 1966, it was like coming home, in more ways than one. First, I was flying there to join my husband-to-be, to begin our life together. But also, my brain retained an imprint of desert from my early childhood years in the Texas hill country around Austin, where I was born. Bright stony ground, prickly pear, mesquite, clear hot days – they were in my blood.
Ken and I lived in Tucson for four years that first time, and the desert, its mountains, its spaces, its abundant and exotic life-forms, seemed like a paradise. When we reluctantly left to continue with graduate school, we swore to return ASAP. Though "as soon" became "whenever," somehow lengthening into 15 years, we did return in the 1980s, and the experience was coming home a second time. But a life in Tucson for us was not to be, and a short six years later we had to leave once again. (see note 1, below)
Then in spring 2013, almost 50 years from the first time we saw Sonora, when a friend and his wife told us they had recently bought a winter home in Tucson and that we could use it for a visit, we jumped at the chance. Arriving in April, we spent the time in and around Tucson, re-mapping the desert-that-is onto the desert-remembered –"filling in the pixels," as Ken put it – and re-discovering the amazing distinctiveness, like another planet, of the grand Sonoran desert.
We stayed from mid-April into mid-June, during the three months the Tohono O'odham call Uam Masad ("desert-in-bloom month"), U'us Wihogdag Masad ("month to gather beans; time of hunger"); and Ha:san Bak Masad ("month to gather saguaro fruit") -- (note 2). It was a wonderful time to be in northern Sonora: yolk-yellow palo verdes, cactus flowers of all hues, baby birds and animals under every mesquite.
The haiku (note 3) and photographs in this book reflect what we experienced during that all-too-brief time, feeling the days go slowly by from dawn to dark, driving out into the desert and mountains, watching with older eyes, listening with older ears, drinking it all in.
I hope those who live in Sonora will find this short account of a desert spring familiar, and that those who live elsewhere will gain a brief glimpse of its power, the vivid coming-to-life of this garden-of-deserts, set against a dramatic backdrop of rocks and space as old as the stars.
Notes to the Preface
1. The very prickly story of how and why we had to leave our Paradise Regained is recounted in Ken Lauter's Songs from Walnut Canyon (Xlibris, 2010), Postcards from Paradise (Xlibris, 2013), and Poet in Sonora; the Tucson years (in progress).
2. The Tohono O'odham names cited here for April, May, and June, along with their translations, are from the March 2013 edition of The Saguaro Sentinel; the official newspaper of Saguaro National Park, Darla Sidles, Park Superintendent (National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior). The Sentinel in turn credits R.B. Hanson and J. Hanson, Southern Arizona Nature Almanac (University of Arizona Press, Tucson AZ, 2003).
3. As in my first book of haiku (A Year of Haiku, Xlibris 2013), these poems are based on 19 syllables in 3 lines: 1st and 3rd lines, 7 syllables; 2nd line, 5 syllables; one ("Weaving in Sonora") is multiple-stanza, using the same structure. The Epilogue, "Visions: Driving up Kitt Peak," does not employ a haiku format.
-- JLL, Nacogdoches TX, July 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Morning Desert Roosters
Cool Mornings on the Porch
Cactus Wren's One-Way Conversation
Desert Voluptuary
In the Shade of a Prickly Pear
Weaving in Sonora
Midday
Outcomes
Winds Gusting to 40
Cinco de Mayo
Mesquite Growing Season
Desert Facts of Life
See Her, She's Gone
Afternoon
Sabino Canyon Creek
Sabino Canyon Cardinal
Geology Vista, Santa Catalina Mountains
In the Chiricahua Mountains
Evening
Glory Light
World Turned Away Now
Why the Desert Night Seems So Familiar
Epilogue
Visions: Driving up Kitt Peak
Notes (additional information regarding some topics mentioned in the poems:
Cinco de Mayo, Sabino Canyon, Chiricahua Mountains, Kitt Peak)
SAMPLE PAGES
Copyright © 2021 Judith L. Lauter
