I watch you flare up from the Mojave backdrop, <br />obstreperous, a lyric of exploding tar— <br />bold and unpredictable after legions of vernacular, <br />tawdry scrub pine. I am taken aback, <br /> <br />dazed by a temperamental tremor <br />of branches flung across the desert's spine. <br />High limbs swirl into vivid saxophones. <br />A tree that plays on being a tree, an impostor <br /> <br />among the true believers, you are all asymmetry <br />and wild trumpets of spiked hair unloosed at noon, <br />the disorder of a jazz riff, a July blizzard. <br />I love your crazed charm, a madman raving at sky. <br />An old world prophet, you brandish a vision <br />as the world's traffic turns its back, glides onward<br /><br />Geraldine Connolly<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-a-joshua-tree/
