The Desert Is Not Empty

I recently watched a gimmicky nature documentary called Night on Earth. After dark in the Sonoran Desert, Mexican long-tongued bats behave like the birds and the bees. They carry pollen from one night-blooming cactus to the next, fertilizing them across great distances. The documentary unfurled these wonders in time-lapse: cactus flowers, pink and purple and white, arc open to expose stiff styles and powder-lush stamens. The bright, open petals reflect the moonlight, their blue sheen a beacon. Bats flap like hummingbirds as they tongue nectar from the flowers’ sweet centers, dusting their faces bright with pollen. A desert miracle, ordinary as sunset.

I thought of the speaking bats in the Salvadoran poet Javier Zamora’s “Saguaros,” a poem about a childhood US/Mexico border crossing.