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Blowdown
Robert Brickhouse

-near Saguaro National Park, Arizona

The creosote and jumping cholla dance.
In violent gusts an ancient palo verde
Bites the dust. We duck inside, afraid
Our chance to hike the mountain trails is lost.
You study birds and flowers, I watch
Cloud shadows climb rock face
To the knife slivers of snow on the ridge tops.
Trash bins upended, a fierce
Whistle under the door, we didn’t
Know the desert could rage like this.
But we are learning to be ready
For more unexpected weather, envying
The coyote gangs that saunter down the wash.

—
Robert Brickhouse has contributed poems and stories to many magazines and journals, among them the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Southern Poetry Review, the American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Louisiana Literature, the Texas Review, Hollins Critic, Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta Review, Pleiades, and Light Quarterly. He worked for many years as a reporter for Virginia newspapers and as a writer and editor for publications at the University of Virginia.

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