Ridden Hard, Put Up Wet
Worn down landscape
Ridden hard and put up wet over eons of time.
Buttes interspersed with ravines and wadis,
Vast irregular symmetry.
Clumps of purple blue green sage
To have been seen by the riders of olden times.
Clusters scattered randomly.
A patchwork without design
Covering endlessly to the horizon
Intermingled with beef and horse.
The buttes come in irregular waves of shapes and sizes.
Conical breasts sprung up in ridges,
Or sometimes alone at the sky line.
Isolated flat tops
Or long Capetown table mountains;
African ant hill shapes,
Crenulated with skirts of vertical old rivulet stripes.
The overstory of bare hard scrabble thin land
Draped to the side of the ravines
Exposing the layers of understory limestone below.
Sentinel wood line posts, strong with wire, guard the narrow highway
That rolls with the landscape.
Occasional cotton wood ribbons
Crosses the roadway over the sign ‘Dry Run Creek’ which still remains dry until the rain comes.
All this
Served under the banner of blue sky
Shredded with a mare’s tail wisp of clouds
7/13/2020
Beyond a sandstorm’s gritty veil,
A solitary Bedouin,
Like a ghost in a sea of dunes,
Rides slowly along in the dusk.
The singing of rababah strings
Mimic the cooling evening winds;
Tambourines and flutes sound sadly
From the oasis where he’s bound.
His caravans once wound their ways
From the Atlas to the Tigris,
Trudging across the somber sands
Of a boundless and barren realm.
O Bedouin, where are thy tracks?
No hooves clatter in the wadis;
No trail of rotting camel dung.
O Bedouin, where are thy ways?
O Bedouin does your dirah
Yet teem with goat and camel flocks,
Since you have settled in the towns,
Which you once heaped with scorn and mocked?
O noble herdsman once so proud,
Tightly wrapped up in culture’s shroud,
Are you bottled up like the Djinn;
Forced to serve those who hemmed you in?
The rosy mirage of freedom
Is like a scarlet evening light
That paints the clouds with fiery hopes
Which fade in thralldom to the night.
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