Awake Unto Me

About the Book

Running In the Evening

I've run until my breath has gone away;
the rising winds disturb the forbidding sands;
the cacti rustle with the close of day,
their blackened forms in all directions stand.
My eyes are dazed from the shimmering heat,
the lemon-gusts of sage dry out my nose;
I look around as evening, like a sheet
of darkened blue, to moonless blackness grows.
A windless rustle eerily crawls away
against horizons always past my sight
I can't be sure now-what has come my way
could be the wind-or something from the night-
And as the darkness chills my sun-burned skin,
I sense the desert slowly closing in.

About the Author

Karl Rosenquist, born in San Jose, California in 1964, was a wordsmith and wrote poems almost from the time he first held a pencil or crayon. Family, friends and the natural world were important themes in his early poetry, and as he matured, loss, complexities of relationships and the environment were topics addressed in his work. An esteemed English instructor at Santiago Canyon College in Orange, California, Dr. Rosenquist died in July 2003 of a diabetic hypoglycemic reaction.