LORI DAVIS
P O E T R Y
POET LAUREATE
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The City of Palm Desert is proud to announce the selection of its first Poet Laureate, Lori Davis, whose mission is to elevate the literary arts and foster creative expression within the City. This appointment reflects the City's commitment to promoting culture and creativity as vital elements of our vibrant community.
PALM DESERT: City of Warmth and Light
Silver shimmers outline the fronds of our tallest palms as the desert sun makes its initial tilt towards winter and Mt. San Jacinto stands bedecked in titanium white
until the wildflowers fully hyperbolize our springtime experience: crispy paper petals of the whispering bells, the chuparosas nestled in unassertive shades of sand,
a tender-lavendering of the smoke trees, a hummingbird perched on the red torch of an ocotillo. Pale yellow sky holds a cotton ball cloud above the Santa Rosas, closer
to paradise than anything otherwise. What stays the same is the variation in every day. We are invited to live parts of our lives without portion. If only nature wrote fiction.
Shade forms in the furrows of the Little San Bernardinos. Art accumulates on corners and medians about the city. We are aware of extremes and all the dusty in-betweens.
As long-timers, full-timers, part-timers, weekenders, we have our acclimations. Life here makes it easier to fathom and admire majesty, our own, and in others.
Another day and the brazen sun spontaneously adjusts, instructs the mountains when to blush and pewter. Millions of years have led to this air and color.
If we temporarily leave for the lure of an oceanside, a ski slope, or skyscrapers, the draw to return is real; a heart knows when it has arrived home, once again.
The sun’s gone down, but the heat doesn’t care. The sky turns a faded-shade of lapis, then aquas, before it navys into a color too elusive for accurate human description.
The desert night quiets and composes itself, Cassiopeia owns her fixed wide-sky place, and the marbled-moon releases its wash of radiance across the creosote, and us.
Lori Davis, Palm Desert Poet Laureate 2023