This poem is published in Reflection -- the literary magazine of Gonzaga University where I work and go to school. I wrote it in Arizona while my husband and I were there visiting his father and stepmother. On the way back from a short trip into Mexico, everyone in the car became very still, and the poem came to me as I sat quietly watching the desert go past my window.

To some, god speaks in buildings.
I have to those structures
Gone thirsty, heard those rules, but
God never speaks to me
there, from the inside she knows and
Waits for the desert to tell me this --

My father was a white man
    of the Norwegian tribe,
And my mother was a white
Woman with brown skin from
The Allies, Lakota mostly.
Together they created a desert.

I look like my father --
    talk like his people, white, mostly;
But not deep inside
From where I thirst, I speak
Not with my tongue but from my heart
To tell what I heard in the desert.

Nurturing came violent
Like summer rains that flood
Fast through the washes.
Nothing soaks in, My thirst
Is this, too busy surviving
To take a sip listening for a god.

Like other desert life I
Have grown thorns to protect.
The chollas are twisted but
Beautiful; saguaros
Are straight and tall, strong -- there is much
Beauty to be found within me still.

I am ready for the gentle
Winter rains that nourish and
Taste like my tears, if I stay
Quiet in this desert,
These structures, listen to these rules
Then I will hear my god and thirst no more.