A Moment of Peace on Arrakis
Golden beneath the blue
egg of sky, the desert
offers the illusion
of docility. Sand is as omnipresent
as the cinnamon scent
of melange, as pernicious as the sun's glaring eyes.
Granules inch beneath stillsuit seals,
gather in creases of skin, cling
to eyelashes. Each gust of wind
alters the rippling form of the dunes,
grain by grain — a shifting tide of sand.
They say Paul-Muad'dib, the Mahdi,
could taste the future on the spice, sense
the twisting storms of time, pathways
billowing, splitting, churning
into new pathways. They say
he could carve fate
in the same way wind carves
desert and stone. But the Mahdi is long gone,
and the desert is quiet. No signs remain,
no worms stir the landscape,
no Fremen scuttle into the cool
depths of caves — just the hush
of wind and sand, just the harsh
stare of the sun and the lingering
incense of spice.
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Author's note: If you've read this poem and are very confused, it's likely because you have never read Frank Herbert's Dune (or seen either the movie or miniseries). I didn't intend for this to be a fan fiction poem, but the phrase "Winds of change (or) Winds Changed" present by xXAeymLXx got me to thinking about how the wind can alter dunes into rippling shapes, and because I am currently rereading the book and loving it all over again, the poem was a natural extension from there. Anyway, xXAeymLXx, I hope you enjoyed this, even if you are not a fan of Dune.
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The Poetry Project
PoesíaThe Poetry Project was ongoing from early 2013 through April 30, 2014. It invited readers to submit prompts, which I turned into poems. The prompts were quite varied and let me stretch my skills, like doing calisthenics. The project is over, but th...
