Sleeping in the Desert
February 25th, 2006Save as PDF
It was years ago, but the nights I spent camping out under the desert sky are still vivid. You become very aware of your spot in the universe when you can actually see the stars and hear the nocturnal critters scrabbling around you on the cooling sand.
Sleeping in the Desert
Across the fields of constellations
A bright meteor flames, a fizzing flare
That burns its dying instant on my mind.
All night I gaze up at the moving sky, aware
Of omens high and low that soar and creep.
Beneath the Sonoran floor
Dim ossuaries plunge.
What crackly beast,
Its skeleton its shield, now waits to lunge
In brainless rage, its dinner feast
Blockaded by my plastic sheet?
I dread the ant lion’s tiny roar.
Face upward on the cooling sand, I feel
Myself precisely pinned midway
Between the rim and hub of creation’s wheel.
Above, the cosmos, invisible by day:
Below, deep and wild and teeming,
Another universe blindly spins.
February 26th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
John, not very quotable, but Suzanne & I are really enjoying this, and , previously, I’ve never read poetry.
February 26th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Really liked it… with reservations about “poetic” sounding vocab at beginning. Looked up Sonoran. Was relieved to learn it referred to a Mexican Province and not Greek or Roman literature. (I don’t always know what I’m doing… )
I think it’s very quotable. Lying on the sand between the hub and the rim of time. Wow. The earth underneath, the cosmos above. The globe spinning. I’ve oft thought but n’er so well expressed that feeling. Philosophical!
—Wally
March 4th, 2006 at 8:23 am
I too liked the wheel image. Lovely poem - made me want to get back to one of those places that’s all about sky at night. Think about telling us what you’re reading on the reading list place — or what you’ve read recently. You have interesting picks & I find pickin’s the hardest bit.