Saguaro Sunrise — Image by kenne
Saguaro cactus at sunrise—
you say endurance,
beauty against all odds.
I see a drunk saint
full of needles
hoarding water like secrets.
The sun bleeds out behind it
without apology.
If there’s a lesson there,
it’s that even the harshest thing
knows how to bloom
when it has to.
— kenne
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On the Outer Banks of North Carolina
I keep the cigar lit
long enough to feel dangerous.
The whiskey glows
like a small sunset
I can hold.
But when the glass is empty
and the scene is still there,
I know—
it was always theater.
— kenne
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Black and White Sunset — Image by kenne
Evening works in grayscale.
The mountains turn honest,
stripped of their bright talk.
The sun lowers itself
behind the ridge—
another shift done,
another mark made clean.
— kenne
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Cactus Wren Waits for the Dust from a Desert Storm to Move On — Image by kenne
Morning haze rolls in
like a tired excuse.
The desert listens,
doesn’t argue,
lets it pass.
— kenne
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Mother In Hospice (08/26/06)
Every photograph of suffering
proposes a contract:
you may look,
but you must not
turn away too quickly.
The stages of pain—
shock, endurance, vacancy—
are flattened into a single frame.
Time is arrested,
yet the body continues
beyond the border
of the image.
— kenne
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Male Phainopepla — Image by kenne
He is so high in the mesquite
I must squint—
An ace of spades caught in thorns.
Yet I feel the small red spark
of his eye
fasten to me.
The branch yields, does not surrender.
My grandmother said
real strength makes no announcement;
it simply remains.
He falls—
a swift stroke of black—
and rises again
to the same waiting limb.
Nothing altered, it seems.
But the desert keeps a breath
between his leaving and return,
and in that held silence
my heart shifts,
quiet as sand
after the wind.
— kenne
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Hazy Morning Sun In Sabino Canyon — Silhouette Image by kenne
Saguaro cutouts
against a milky sun—
even the shadows
drink their coffee slow
out here.
— kenne
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Abolish ICE Demonstration In Armory Park (07/01/18) — Image by kenne
There is something about grass in Tucson—
it feels like a miracle you can sit on.
We stood on that miracle,
raising our voices.
Armory Park once trained soldiers.
That day,
it trained witnesses.
A little boy climbed
up into a jacaranda tree
and shouted a chant down at us,
his voice high and fearless.
We answered him.
Because every movement begins
with someone small enough
to believe it might work.
— kenne
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Arches National Park Image by kenne
We persist in calling spirit invisible,
as though visibility were vulgar.
But what is more arrogant
than refusing incarnation?
Matter is not the enemy of meaning—
it is meaning slowed down enough to be examined.
— kenne
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Kenne David and Katie on Galveston Beach — Image by kenne
Galveston still has that beach.
Kids probably still run it raw.
But Kenne and Katie grew up—
that’s the real crime.
You don’t notice it happening.
One day you’re just standing there
remembering sand
and wishing you’d paid better attention.
— kenne
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Joy and Kenne — Old Western Look On The Streets of Tucson — Image by kenne
Beloved, count not distance, years,
Nor trials we have known;
For love’s arithmetic is this—
Two solitudes made one.
You are here.
I am here.
And absence finds no room between.
— kenne
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Mushrooms and Moss on Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
Moss holds the slope together.
Mushrooms rise, then vanish.
Water remembers both.
— kenne
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Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down.
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free;
The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornwall, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
— Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931)
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Male Broad-banded Swallowtail — Image by kenne
A butterfly is a question
with wings.
This one asks it slowly,
circling cattails and light,
as though the answer might be
something you feel, not know.
— kenne
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Clouds Over The Grand Teton National Park (06/06/23) — image by kenne
We leave Yellowstone—
the road straightens,
mountains step back into order.
Broken clouds hold the sun
like a shutter half-closed.
— kenne
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