My mind is a canyon. Small rivulets run from its aching sides down into the valley. And when the sun is blocked and the canyon becomes cold with the night, my mind waits for the owl and follows it into flight.
It is the tranquility of darkness, the steep of the land. My mind follows mountain goats, steady in their gait, their treacherous feet pondering icy cliffs. My mind slips into darkness and follows the hawk. It watches as talons and feathers repel. It waits for the plummet and admires the death of rats and small field mice.
It laughs as sturdy mountain goats slip to their deaths in the scrambling black canyon and the owl sings with delight and prays that it will not know the darkness of the loving canyon at night.
My mind aches with despair at the loss of my love. It waits and it waits and it asks for no hope. It watches as warm blankets of snow cover brown desert cacti.
Small animals run through dusty basins and drink in the warmth of the heat of the long windy desert. It waits in the night and watches for the sound of small brooks and oases that do not exist.
It drinks in the warmth of the dry dusty air and it watches as small green cacti come to life at night.
But these are not cacti but only my mind.
Do candles burn in hell? Do crying children know pain? Can the blind not see? Does the sky know the stars, know the sun? Do they know themselves?
Black and breathing, the desert is alive.
There is neither water, nor thirst nor is there love in this warmth.
There is only my mind.
YOU ARE READING
We Lack a Word
PoetryA COLLECTION OF RHYTHMIC PROSE AND POETRY "The reader forms an attachment to the author/narrator as the parts meld into a story. The majority of the work is one - to two-page vignettes that create almost a novel in verse... Absorbing, an other...
