Still Standing

 

"Montezuma Castle" Photo © Jennifer Wagner

 

Neither castle, nor Aztec,

not even Sinaguan.

I don’t crumble

 

beneath what you think of me,

nor what you’ve labeled me

with your tiny tongue.

 

Called something

I never was—

I outlast your angry names.

 

I survive by the hands

that built me, and survivors know

the power in their own true names.

 

You call me

ruined.

Yet, I remain.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Montezuma Castle is a misnomer.  It was neither a castle nor built by nor for the Aztec emperor Montezuma.  Those who did build it are referred to as “Sinagua” people, meaning “without water” in Spanish.  Despite being called “Sinagua” they actually had plenty of water.  Montezuma means “lord frowns in anger.”

To all my other survivors out there.

For What’s Going On?  Ruins

Also, after posting poems for years without process notes, I seem to be on a kick of doing it these days. 

 

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!