Green Sahara
The Great Sahara desert as large as the continental United States
a deadly vast searing wasteland of sand dunes mountain high
The expansive buckle of the world's desert belt void of color
dotted by scarce oases of what once was.
Twenty thousand years ago with just a wobble of the earth's axis
monsoon rains seasonally showered the Sahara plains
Feeding waterways of rivers and mega fresh water lakes
abundance of sea creatures thrive
Green Sahara was alive.
Witness from cave paintings of a world the winds of sands
erased.A world of green savannas full of animals to hunt
and herd. Elephants, giraffes, gazelles, ostriches and lions too.
People in villages fished and swam the mighty lakes.
Beware of hippos , crocodiles and turtles that bite
Fossils of shell fish tell the tales of a lush time long ago.
Cattle and goats domesticated, crops grew and ripen
in fertle soil. Was this the Garden of Eden now guarded
by deadly heat and buried by time and shifting sands.
Swamplands and rainforest stretched through North
Africa. Life was good and plentiful for our ancient
ancestors.
Even whale bones bare witness to a time of a
great sea. Of bays and lagoons and shores
of beaches tropical in air. A different time
blown away by dry winds and buried beneath the sands
Green Sahara will return again
Like clockwork the pendulum of wet to dry
happens every twenty thousand years
We are in the fifth millennium of a dry spell
Within fifteen thousand years a tilt
a wobble of the earth's axis and
Green Sahara begins again.
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