Upon First Seeing the Desert

When I saw the desert for the first time I
suddenly knew home,
knew what it felt like to be in a place
where you wanted to just run and did not
care where you were running to
or how long it would take you to run back.

I knew a love I could not name
and I did not try to name it.

I knew also a great loneliness
that was not forlorn but was of a place
not lonely but just one
that shone my longing back at me.

God did not matter. He is what He is;
I know this. But He was not there
unless He was a prickly pear barrel cactus
paloverde scorpion or a hundred other
possible manifestations
all respectable if true.

But I cannot say. I can only say that it
did not matter. All that did matter
was that I could feel the sun, feel the thrill
of panic, of thirst;
feel the hunger for cold fruit
but not once feel hunger
for what I could not have.

-"Mojave"