We’ve got that springtime crazy
Our hearts have grown hungry under desert skies
by Georgie Abel, Contributing Editor, author of Go West Young Woman.
We wanna take shots of lightning
Use thunder to make heavy hip-hop beats
Frost a cake with the snowcapped peaks
Scoop the cookies-and-cream stars from the sky
And press them on a waffle cone
Just one taste of these vanilla bones and
We’re addicted to the blooming cactus
We know it won’t last us
Because the summertime is coming
But for now we
Sip the springtime rains,
Ring out the clouds with open
Mouths and chug their milky nectar
Because we’ve got that springtime crazy
Our hearts have grown hungry under desert skies
We wanna throw a slab of sandstone on the grill
Sizzling and popping just like the blood
Of our mothers, the thrill
To just be breathing
Synapsing and loud
And now we crave a sage salad
Dressed with the sap from a pine
And a side of yucca fries
Sprinkled with our salty tears
Mined from these wild eyes
Because we’ve got that springtime crazy
Our hearts have grown hungry under desert skies
Give us the moon!
The waxing moon
We know the moon
How her face can be caramelized and sliced
Sprinkled with a wildflower spice
And her craters are filled with a cream
Heavy and sweet
Been surviving off those moon beams, oh God
We can’t get enough
The dark of winter left us so ravenous
Because we’ve got that springtime crazy
Our hearts have grown hungry under desert skies
We wanna
Talk about this new space
Within us
Fill it up with letting
Indian paintbrush
Melt on our tongue
Ah, to be this young!
We take the needles from a cactus,
Push them into
Our spine,
Bathe our nervous systems in
A brackish brine
’Cause we want something with desert resilience
To make up our backbones and you know it’s
Because we’ve got that springtime crazy
And these hearts of ours
These throbbing hearts of ours
Have grown so hungry
And of infinite size
Under these ever-changing desert skies
Georgie Abel is a climber, writer, and yoga teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area. She loves slabs, coffee, power spots, highballs, gin and tonics, poetry, running in the mountains, and not training. She writes about her adventures at www.georgieabel.wordpress.com.
This piece is an excerpt from her book of poetry called Go West Young Woman. It is also published in the latest issue of The Climbing Zine.
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