The Namib
If your love was like the Namib;
Mountainous and bare,
Would you dig deep for water?
Would you scour the ridged crevasses there?
For something that moved,
Within and without,
Trying to remove, any and all doubt.
If your love was a deserted plain;
Parched and dying,
Would you search in vain –?
Weather-worn, beaten, sand-blast hewn;
Pecked by vultures – circling,
Stung by bees – swarming,
Gouged by the horns of a great Wildebeest;
Devoured in the jaws of a mighty hyena,
cackling, with delighted spite at your plight.
If your love was arid;
barely breathing,
Would you imagine
A mirage of pelicans, seething,
Pink to the horizon, hungry and feeding.
Could you still dance to the silvery moon,
Sway and kiss the Milky Way, and swoon.
Could you make a sand castle stick;
Or would it fall through your fingers –
Quicker than quick.
If your love was a desert;
Would you hide like an ostrich, in fright
Or, chatter like a baboon,
through the night
Would you roar like a leopard
Looking for it’s spots
Or fight like a lizard
who knows what’s what?
If -
Your -
Love -
Was -
A-
Desert -
Cast in Stone.
Deserted,
Desolate,
Designed to destroy;
Would you lay down on the scorching sand;
To wither and die.
Or mutate to survive – why?
Would three raindrops;
Dew-soft and honey-sweet
licked from your skin
Make a river that flows,
wide, wider and thin
If your love was brittle and dry;
Would several clouds in a clear bright sky,
Make you cry, allay your fears,
Or bring you to your knees.
Would you rest on a rock to renew your will,
Would emptiness give you impetus to fill?
If the suffocating heat of relentless rejection;
Stifled your breath,
Would your mind be plotting,
an early death?
Would you quiver like a zebra,
Stampede like an ox,
Sting like the scorpions tail in a knot?
Or - would you
Soar away like an eagle –
across the skies;
Coo, coo as a dove perched on high.
Find an oasis calm and green,
And squat like a quail, soft and unseen.
Think about life, and it’s true meaning.
Be still, patient, accept;
That glorious seeing.
An open field;
flower-filled and breathing.
Life lived in a reality of beauty and feeling;
Hung out boldly with the stars,
for the dreaming.
Forget about love;
lost in the desert;
The impressions and depressions,
of the changing landscape.
Blood, shed from wounds;
in the Valley of Death,
The fire ants have taken,
to their beds.
Copyright © Judith Palmer | Year Posted 2010
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