A Little Desert Poetry

A Little Desert Poetry

(From Marian Johns)

OH, BARREN LAND

Here a soul may grow in stature, reaching to the very stars,

And a heart forget the prison of convention’s rigid bars.

These are things that make me love it, God forsaken though it be.

Oh, barren land, in your domain a man is free - is free.

---Claude C. Walton, Evanston, Wyoming

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Here’s another - by Everett Ruess
(who disappeared while hiking around a remote part of Utah)

Say that I am starved, that I was lost and weary;

That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;

Footsore, thirsty and sick with strange diseases;

Lonely and wet and cold - but that I kept my dream

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 “DESERT SONG”

from the 1926 Broadway Musical of the same name

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II & Otto Harbach

My desert is waiting;

Dear, come there with me.

I’m longing to teach you

Love’s sweet melody.

I’ll sing a dream-song to you,

Painting a picture for two:

Blue heaven and you and I,

And sand kissing a moonlit sky.

A desert breeze whisp’ring a lullaby,

Only stars above you

To see I love you.

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Ballad Of The Desert Explorer  by Dave McFarland

If you like sand

If you like sun

Desert Explorers are the ones

Cactus, ants

All kinds of plants

Homesteads, mines

We like good times