Spread the word

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Margaret Mohrmann, MD

Contributor's Note

I “found” this poem while gazing out the window of my room early one morning in Taos, at the 2012 writing retreat for health professionals. As I considered the thistles, live and tumbled, in the field, my thoughts, unbidden, slid from one thing to another, touching upon multiple aspects of my intellectual life and spiritual experience. Everything connects—including the old “Sons of the Pioneers” song, imprinted from childhood TV, that had been playing in my head from the moment we arrived in the West.

Tumbleweeds

Poetry, Taos Writing Retreat Issue

Biology student, I learned – many times –
    field succession from man-scoured earth:
    weeds to grasses to shrubs
    to cedars to oaks.
Eastern states ecology.

I’ll be rolling along

But, when these Western thistles,
    the prickly tufts
    I see now from my adobe window,
    tumble,
does anything come next?

Deep in my heart is a song

Elms to coal to immortal diamond.
    Child to adult to sage to angel,
    evolution as eternal plan.
Resurrection theology is
    field succession from sin-scoured earth.

Here on the trail I belong

But, what if I’m Western and dry
    and success is

Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds?

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