The morning is clouded and the birds are hunched,
More cold than hungry, more numb than loud,
This crisp, Arizona shore, where desert meets
The coming edge of the winter world.
It is a cold news in stark announcement,
The myriad stars making bright the black,
As if the sky itself had been snowed upon.
But the stars—all those stars,
Where does the sure noise of their hard work go?
These plugs sparking the motor of an otherwise quiet sky,
Their flickering work everywhere in a white vastness:
We should hear the stars as a great roar
Gathered from the moving of their billion parts, this great
Hot rod skid of the Milky Way across the asphalt night,
The assembled, moving glints and far-floating embers
Risen from the hearth-fires of so many other worlds.
Where does the noise of it all go
If not into the ears, then hearts of the birds all around us,
Their hearts beating so fast and their equally fast
Wings and high songs,
And the bees, too, with their lumbering hum,
And the wasps and moths, the bats, the dragonflies—
None of them sure if any of this is going to work,
This universe—we humans oblivious,
Drinking coffee, not quite awake, calm and moving
Into the slippers of our Monday mornings,
Shivering because, we think,
It’s a little cold out there.
About the poet Alberto Rios
In this evocative poem, Alberto Ríos captures the serene intersection of humanity and nature on a cold Arizona morning. The imagery of a crisp desert landscape juxtaposed with the celestial movements of stars and the industrious hum of birds and insects serves as a meditation on the quiet persistence of life. Ríos subtly reflects on the human tendency to overlook the vast, intricate workings of the universe as we carry on with mundane routines.
To learn more about Alberto Ríos, Arizona's first Poet Laureate and a master of blending everyday moments with universal reflections, visit his bio page here and delve into the life and work of this celebrated poet.
Summary
On a cold Arizona morning, the speaker imagines the apparently silent stars as an enormous working machine whose unheard energy continues through birds, insects and other creatures while humans sleepily enter an ordinary Monday.
Analysis
Ríos begins with a familiar contradiction: desert Arizona is unexpectedly cold. He then enlarges that small sensory surprise into a cosmic one. Stars become electrical plugs, the Milky Way becomes a “hot rod skid,” and distant worlds become hearth fires. The central question is not whether the universe makes noise but where all that noise goes. The poem’s imaginative answer transfers cosmic energy into living creatures—the rapid hearts and wings of birds, humming bees, moths, bats and dragonflies. Humans, meanwhile, remain hilariously unaware, drinking coffee and putting on slippers. The final understatement makes the scale difference wonderful: an incomprehensibly active universe is reduced in human perception to “a little cold out there.”