Desert Whippersnapper

 

The whip snake came

looking for black-throated sparrows

in the cholla,

twisting her braided scales

around the palo verdes

and catclaws.

She was nervous, though, and hungry,

and it was nearing night.

 

She didn’t notice

the minor shift on the limb

of a grandaddy saguaro,

so busy was she hissing and striking

at anything that moved,

mouth gaping like a blood red tulip.

 

A quick and seasoned cactus wren,

with irises glittering and peeled on the scrub below,

shuttled her brood

into their own sleepy hollow

in the arm of the saguaro—

and tipclawed out again

to watch the night feast.

 

Silent horseman of the desert,

the great horned owl, swooped

and gripped that whip

like a coachman

severing the spine in his talon.

 

Mrs. Wren Marple thought to herself,

I didn’t even have to miss Fallon!

I’m always in the wrong place at the right time—

I saw all this before Law & Order at nine!

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

For Shay’s Word Garden Word List

And that’s a wrap, folks!  Thirty poems in 30 days for National Poetry Month were sometimes a heavy task, even for an armchair detective, so today I had to go light!  

 

Stevie and Vincent (the Gold Dust Woman and the Redheaded Madman)

 

The Poet’s Garden

is lit with black fire, melancholy,

and a brushstroke break

turning lover’s faces to ash.

 

Just ask le fou roux

or the gold dust woman.

 

Remember Rumours?

Maybe we love it because in our own ways

we’ve lived it, too—as if our own heartwrecks

had been written like birdsong

 

sounding so good

we want to cut off our own ear

to keep it

 

safe from another’s melody—

or to present it,

bound and bloody, to a lover as a reminder

 

never to forget the whispering

of blue firs

hanging like shadows—

and fleeting, like the holding of hands,

 

before we stopped dreaming

of tomorrow.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

NaPoWriMo Day 29:  write a poem inspired by the life of a musician, poet, or other artist.  I’ve written a mash-up inspired by Stevie Nicks and Vincent Van Gogh.

dVerse Poetics:  Getting Hooked on Opening Lines

 

The Poet’s Garden (Public Garden with Couple and Blue Fir Tree) was painted by Van Gogh in 1888.  Photo © Jennifer Wagner from my copy of Essential Van Gogh.

In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album number seven of the 500 greatest of all time.

“Le Fou Roux” (The Redheaded Madman) was a nickname given to Vincent Van Gogh by the townspeople of Arles.

“Gold Dust Woman” is the title of a song from the Rumours album as well as the title of a biography of Stevie Nicks.

 

Two Things

 

 

She says she’s ready to go

and I know she means

two things at once.

 

I feel selfish for wanting her to mean

only one—

 

to stay with us a little longer

enjoying the hummingbird blanket I bought her

(she says it’s her favorite),

and the chocolates she loves

(at 95 I’ve introduced her to something new),

to hear her stories

of when she first moved to Phoenix

with her beloved, 71 years ago.

 

But bones are breaking in her spine

and cataracts and histoplasmosis

from the Ohio River Valley

make it so she can’t see much anymore.

 

She wants to go home

and Home.

 

Holding onto my hands

a little longer at the Rehab Center,

I hear a fluttering, a humming

I recognize as goodbye.

 

And so, this poem,

meant to explain, to show and not tell,

to show and to tell,

 

why I am a poet and not something else—

sits here between two things—

 

where else can I put

all the joy and pain

held in between

these brief but beautiful wings.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

NaPoWriMo Day 3

dVerse free verse