I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,.
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand.
Your breath into my mouth. You reach "then bend.
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs.
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your.
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,.
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,.
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.
.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, a fiction writer and poet, wrote his first book entitled, "Calendar of Dust- in 1991. Later in 1991 this book won him a Before Columbus American Book Award. Following he won the Lannan Poetry Fellowship, Southwest Book Award from the Border Area Librarians Association for "Carry Me Like Water- which was the second novel he wrote in 1995. A writer for the Washington Post Book World said, "Sáenz has an evocative prose' and the ability to tell a story using not one voice, but many.- Today Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso.
The poem, "To the Desert-, was written in 1995. He uses an individual to describe solidarity and the difficult one sometimes encounters while trying to make an important decision. In line two he says, "You taught me how to live without the rain."" Through this diction he is describing how one feels when they are unable to get what they want and are forced to adapt to a new method of doing something. Throughout the poem he portrays an individual that is uncertain about him or herself. The individual is stranded in the dessert or one might also call it a state of uncertainty. That individual then decides to make the best decision he or she can make with regards to the options that are before him or her.
