How swift it is this heart can shift, can shed old sadness as a snake sheds scales, new clarity of vision coming as old skin falls from athwart the eyes.

The Raven’s eyes sparkle in the desert sun.

I am abraded, skinless. I am that part of the desert grown aware of itself. I leak me into the desert, my shattered skin a colander.

The Raven accompanies me into the field of cholla.

She floats among the treacherous cacti, the plants near-bending to grant her passage. The mountains shimmer behind her. Cholla needles cast pale shadows on the ground, clouds of white spines a thousand glorioles backlit by the lowering sun. I wonder how I could ever have been anywhere else than here. I wonder at ever wanting anything else than this.

The Raven laughs at my foolishness.

In the desert no opportunity is ignored: my Jeep, the color of burst cactus fruit, has summoned a cloud of bees. I’d left the driver’s window open for ventilation and they have entered, three hundred of them, perhaps more. Another hundred surround me hungrily.

Breathe deep and drop all guile, open the windows gently one by one, and with luck passage will be granted you. A dozen bees where you would sit: wave them away. Ten where you would place your sandaled foot on the pedal: apologize and rev the engine anyway. Grant me the grace to leave this place in a state no more punctured than that in which I arrived. Let me walk in peace through this den of buzzing lions.

They are tolerant. They withhold their wrath. A mile down the road only a dozen bees remain in the Jeep. The Raven spies one of them on her thigh. She stretches out a loving finger, lifts bee off denim, murmurs softly to it and puts it out the passenger-side window.