Saguaro Poems: ‘That cactus is so sturdy!’ (with audio)

They seem so secure, the Saguaros, like survivors no matter what gets thrown at them.

But they aren’t, it turns out, as made clear by an article from The Washington Post about one saguaro in particular, nicknamed ‘Strong-Arm,’ a particularly long-lived and prolifically limbed individual who collapsed during the monsoon this August.

50 in 1 Saguaro - Superstition Wilderness
Al_HikesAZ on Flickr

For what it’s worth, a local station, CBS 8, claims this cactus began to die in the 1990s.

Anyway, it’s beyond awful to me to think about what fate awaits the saguaros and the other life in the Sonora. It’s a subtly delicate place, the life there so apparently offensive, even combative, all evolved survivors of dearth, but so tenuous, so precarious.

The spikes of these cacti, shrubbery, trees, their offense, their very sparseness, offer us a valuable lesson about individual, domestic and communal security. Whence the first of my Saguaro Poems.

‘That cactus is so sturdy!’

Lucca Daniel Green 14 April 2022

		 ‘Nothing could topple that prickly SoB!’
		      —said a palefaced man who forgot
		                              that weapons are for
		                                         the vulnerable,
	  	                                         the precarious
		                                           and the weak.

[pssst. It’s about saguaros… but it’s not really about saguaros… 🔫🧐 lol]


The second Saguaro Poem “For the Saguaros” is a direct response to the realizations forced on me by the collapse of the majestic giant nicknamed ‘Strong-Arm.’

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