THE
DESERT
It was the Lord, our God, who brought
us and our ancestors up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery.—Joshua 24:17
You
depart for the desert in darkness,
The
way lit by the moon.
Rocks
and scrub touched by chalk,
Brush
lightly dusted white…
The
planet is luminously radioactive.
Mountains
cut out by scissors
Press
black polygons against the sky.
Gradually,
gloaming
Restores
pink flush to the land,
Turning
the moon into a faint watermark.
Noontime
unsheathes his sword,
Slaying
the day.
No
animals peep in this slow broil,
Not
a twitch of the ear,
Not
a blink from a paralytic.
Traveling
inside an oven, you wear a hat,
Swig
ice water frozen the day before,
Keep
delirium at bay like an anxious patient.
The
wind lies in a coma.
Oxygen
is too weak to rise.
Twilight
is adding pigments to oil,
Deepening
blue,
Doing
arithmetic,
Red
times orange.
Tiny
denizens stir as if readying for school.
Dusk
makes a promise:
He
says the mountains hold deep wells and caves,
Cool
as beds freshly made.
He
speaks not to deceive but to encourage.
Waiting
is a long walk to freedom, a motionless journey.
Originally
published in Triggerfish Critical Review
(December 26, 2014)
 |
| Sunrise, California Mojave Desert |
The details of this poem are partly based on my experience residing in and visiting the Mountain and Desert Southwest states and hiking over long distances across varied terrains. However, the poem is not intended merely as an account of my personal experiences but rather as a symbolic representation of every liberation journey in which waiting is an important, necessary aspect of the liberation struggle. All humanity, in my view, is engaged in varying degrees in some form of political liberation struggle, never ending. Moreover, all struggles at some point involve waiting, sometimes over many generations, before they succeed—the struggles of African slaves, colonized peoples, or political dissidents under Big Brother, for example, come to mind. The last line of “The Desert” alludes to Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom.”
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Photo courtesy of Jessie Eastland
ReplyDeletePhoto link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud#/media/File:Morning_Sky_7.jpg
Gonzalinho