By D. R. DiFrancesco

Touching heaven with finger-like peaks

Bathed in purple and black

Crags and fissures a sign of her violent past

Yet in these chiseled features there is peace

Calm in her desolation

Joy in her solitude

Rains come, seldom, brief and miniscule

Life  giving none-the-less

Colors erupt skyward from cracks and crevasses

Green, yellow, orange, and purple

Clothing fit for a queen

Floral draped plains bow at her feet

Only the finest for such a star

Sierra Estrella her name

But the cape once so lovely abandons her

Leaving her naked, hard, and rough

No less beautiful in the raw

Standing tall, she resumes her watch

Desert, now void of  an audience unfurls

Bowing blindly to her majesty

Hawks and buzzards her only court

Left to marvel at her magnificence

Her strength, her beauty, her wonder.

The Sierra Estrella Mountain range (estrella in spanish is “star”)  is located southwest of Phoenix Arizona.  My home looks over these mountains and in the years that I have lived here, I have never gotten tired of looking at them.