Tumbleweed

by Zoe Boyer

Sandra Dal Poggetto, Indigenous, 1987, egg tempera, soft pastel, charcoal on canvas, 84 x 96 inches. Collection of Missoula Art Museum, gift of John W. & Carol L. H. Green.

Tumbleweed

Before I moved to the desert

I’d never seen a tumbleweed—

had only cartoon imaginings of tangled stems

rolling riot through mesas red as stop signs

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while Wile E. Coyote lit the fuse on an Acme rocket

and prepared to meet his illustrator.

But in Arizona I found tumbleweed

still rooted in red soil—rust red,

nothing so garish as the radioactive haze

of cartoon desert—Russian thistle

awash in pink blooms delicate as silk skirts,

verdant stems veined red as rhubarb,

a plant at once dainty with flowers

and brash with spine-tipped leaves.

Eventually tumbleweed gives up the green,

grows woody, snaps at the stem

and rootless it roams, rolls, rushed on by wind

to cast its seeds far and wide.

Still, when I close my eyes

the brilliance of biology is lost to a fever dream

of that whirl-legged roadrunner spitting dust

as he outstrips a bumbling coyote,

tumbleweed tangles scrawled hastily

over the mesas before an anvil drops

or the whole scene blows.

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Zoe Boyer grew up on the western shore of Lake Michigan and now lives among the pines in Prescott, Arizona. She recently completed a BFA in creative writing and is currently working on her master's degree. Her recent work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times and Canary Literary Magazine.