To_The_Desert

To The Desert To the Desert I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs And keep me warm. I was born for you. Above, below, by you, by you surrounded. I wake to you at dawn. Never break your Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios, Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst. Benjamin Alire Sáenz, a fiction writer and poet, wrote his first book entitled, “Calendar of Dust” in 1991. Later in 1991 this book won him a Before Columbus American Book Award. Following he won the Lannan Poetry Fellowship, Southwest Book Award from the Border Area Librarians Association for “Carry Me Like Water” which was the second novel he wrote in 1995. A writer for the Washington Post Book World said, “Sáenz has an ‘evocative prose’ and the ‘ability to tell a story desert, individual, poem, make, one, book, dessert, decision, break, blow, thirst, sáenz, line, wrote, writer, won, without, water, very, uncertain, trying, thinks, taught, right, rain, new, mi, live, life, individual’s, go, feeling, doing, burn, best