Desert Pilgrimage Pat Mora Analysis

Connection to Ancestors In the poem, “Desert Pilgrimage” by Pat Mora, it dramatizes the conflict between losing the connection with nature and heritage and the desire to keep the connection alive. The speaker walks through a metaphorical desert, which signifies the journey her ancestors took to move from Mexico to the United States, and in this journey, she reconnects with the earth. She spends her day picking flowers, harvesting herbs, and at night she sits on a boulder, looking at the stars. From this admiration of the natural earth, she tries to reconnect with her roots. In specific, she remembers a woman who was a large part of the speaker but now ceases to be in her life. The speaker takes this journey with this woman by looking at aspects of nature that remind her of the woman. Literally, it is about a person traveling the desert, surviving on foods she finds in the desert and herbs she has harvested. Then, she describes her plans
The poem begins with the narrator telling herself, “A few more steps, old feet.” (line 1). The old feet she refers to are the ancestor’s feet, that appear to be old and worn out from the rigorous journey they take. The speaker then goes on to say, “In pale tea I’ll see / me with her, tasting wild grapes” (lines 4-5). This shows her reminder of her ancestors in nature. The pale tea is the symbol of the clean, clear simplicity of nature and when the speaker simplifies herself, to the bare nothingness of nature it reveals to her, her ancestors. Then in the following lines, “at dawn, tasting dew / on tender leaves, another year.” (lines 6-7). The dawn represents a new day, a new start where she can again acknowledge her heritage. After, the speaker says, “her hands still guiding me, / at sunset grinding seeds” (lines 11-12). These hands guiding the speaker, are her ancestors leading her through their stories and nature around