Su Ben Poet Free verse

Dream of a Saguaro

Although flowers bloom it’s awkward to say that they are flowers
because they are not flowers, but thorns disguised as yellow pistils 
and stamens surrounded by the petals made of pieces of colorless
paper. Moreover, their fragrance bears no meaning at all because 
they bloom in the night, 

and each time when the scorching sun brands the cactus’ skin 
it cries out loud from the pain of the thorns pierced through 
it’s burning flesh to form renewed skin, 
then, surprised by a heartrending cry, 
the birds flap their wings to fly in the air abandoning the cactus.

However the birds may be, they only are lifeless drones 
flying over a desert. And since they are lifeless, they 
don’t know the meaning of life, and that’s why they only see

the thorny flowers standing open arms in the midst of the desert that is 
filled with ashes of death—nuclear wastes, abandoned poisonous chemical
solutions polluted waters that drive lives to the edge of death.

To the saguaro cactus standing in the midst of man-made miseries, 
nonetheless, dreamed to have an audience with 
the mystic Queen of the Andes, 

and in order for him to fulfill his dream,
to have a long journey toward the south moving along with the sun, 
and then, after crossing the delicate line marked zero,* 
climbing up the Andes for a higher ridge that is higher than the drone. 

And as you go higher the wind starts to rise;
when the wind gets stronger to cut through the skin,
then saguaro’s thorns start to prick its own body from 
loneliness unbearable,  

and that is the time ripe for
the mystic Queen of the Andes to reveal herself 
from the clearing fogs, behind the thick and heavy veil of clouds.

She appears in a dress embellished with tens of thousands of 
not overly extravagant or pompous but graceful flowers that 
bloom centenary. 

She is the tree, immaculate and with inviolable dignity,  
she bears the blooms in the serenity of the high and deep mountain.
 
Today too, the saguaro cactus under scorching sun dreams 
a dream of seeing the elegant Queen of the Andes someday,
even afar it, stands as ever. 

Enveloped in the cloud, though Queen hides her image
she has left her sweet scent behind, 
in the sweet scent she left, the thorn flower saguaro stands
willing to wait another one hundred years to see her again.


*Zero: The Equator

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