Features
July/August 2014
Waiting for the Rains
July/August 2014
Waiting for the Rains
Mountain Avenue, Tucson
This time of year we wait, our skin uncomfortable with the higher humidity and the heat that doesn’t go away even after sunset. We can’t say anymore, “But it’s a dry heat.” The swamp coolers aren’t working very well because the dew points are in the mid-40s. Even then, it’s not enough to bring on the rain. We try to predict when the dew point will rise into the mid-50s and there will finally be enough water in the air to form clouds and drops. Already we see on the weather report that the storms are heading north from the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico. But the storms are stuck at the border this week, reluctant to cross that imaginary line in the Sonoran Desert that divides us desert dwellers into two nations. Maybe the clouds don’t want to bring rain down on all the migrant children in Nogales, only adding to their misery.
Early morning is the only time to be out now because it’s hot even after sunset. The logical thing to do as we wait is to take an early morning walk on Mountain Avenue in Tucson. The art there gives us a reprieve and hope for rain. The art we find is poetry carved into stone. For a full mile on Mountain Avenue between Fort Lowell and Rogers, we stroll along In the early morning cool air and read poems carved into the stones.
The poems were written by our elder poet of the Sonoran Desert, Ofelia Zepeda. She has many accomplishments – University of Arizona Regents’ Professor of linguistics, preserver of the O’odham language, author of several books, and winner of a MacArthur genius award. Today she is our poet and our guide as we walk and wait. We quietly thank Tucson public artist Simon Donovan for coming up with the idea of carving these poems in stone. He’s had many such good public art ideas, including the Diamondback Rattlesnake Bridge. And we are grateful to Ofelia Zepeda for her poems.
The poems along Mountain Avenue speak of desert things…those things that desert dwellers know well. Today we look for news of rain in the poems carved into rock. We look for hope and patience.
(click on images to enlarge
Early morning is the only time to be out now because it’s hot even after sunset. The logical thing to do as we wait is to take an early morning walk on Mountain Avenue in Tucson. The art there gives us a reprieve and hope for rain. The art we find is poetry carved into stone. For a full mile on Mountain Avenue between Fort Lowell and Rogers, we stroll along In the early morning cool air and read poems carved into the stones.
The poems were written by our elder poet of the Sonoran Desert, Ofelia Zepeda. She has many accomplishments – University of Arizona Regents’ Professor of linguistics, preserver of the O’odham language, author of several books, and winner of a MacArthur genius award. Today she is our poet and our guide as we walk and wait. We quietly thank Tucson public artist Simon Donovan for coming up with the idea of carving these poems in stone. He’s had many such good public art ideas, including the Diamondback Rattlesnake Bridge. And we are grateful to Ofelia Zepeda for her poems.
The poems along Mountain Avenue speak of desert things…those things that desert dwellers know well. Today we look for news of rain in the poems carved into rock. We look for hope and patience.
(click on images to enlarge
OZepeda_Cloud Song_
Cloud Song
Greenly they emerge
In colors of blue they emerge
Whitely they emerge
In colors of black they are coming
Reddening they are right here.
Greenly they emerge
In colors of blue they emerge
Whitely they emerge
In colors of black they are coming
Reddening they are right here.
 OZepeda_Ju:ki Ne'i_
Tucked away beneath the blossoms and leaves of the desert willow is Ju:ki Ne'i (Rain Songs), one of many poems in both English and O’odham. Ju:ki Ne'i (Rain Songs): Wa nt o m-ne'i g ju:ki ne'i. Wa nt o n-keihi m-we:hejed. I would sing for you rain songs. I would sing for you rain dances. |
Black Clouds Black clouds lay off in the distance Like black buzzards flying far away Making noise drifting off in the distance Like black buzzards flying, so far away Rumbling, thundering Suddenly they descend. 
OZepeda_Black Clouds_
|
How shall we manage until the clouds descend?
Zepeda gives us some survival strategies in her poem Proclamation which is not found on the Mountain Avenue rocks but on the web instead at the Poetry Foundation website. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/239012
This poem Proclamation is about Cuk Son (Tucson) summers and the heat. In her poem, Zepeda decides to tolerate people like me who:
lament the heat of
a June day, simultaneously
finding pride on surviving
the heat—a dry heat.
She’s less tolerant but politely decides to say nothing about those who spend all day and night in air conditioning and then complain about Tucson’s lack of seasons. “Well, what can we say” about these folks, she wonders.
Zepeda’s proclamation is to commend to us those who know, who remember, and who value that we live in a desert.
It is real desert people who lift their faces
upward with the first signs of moisture.
They know how to inhale properly.
Recognizing the aroma of creosote in the distance.
Relieved the cycle is beginning again.
These people are to be commended.
So we learn from this. We walk early. We read poems in stone. We stand on the back porch facing south, and we take in deep breaths. We inhale, hoping to catch that pungent scent of creosote that desert dwellers love…that aroma that we all say is the thing we miss most when we leave the Sonoran Desert. We take deep breaths hoping to smell the rain coming north from Mexico. And we wait.
~C.J. Shane
