The Desert People

Beyond the badlands
is a sea of white and gold.
A shard of the sun
melts into the mirage,
the cloudless sky
silenced for too long.
The eastern winds,
deafening guttural whistles
from the thorny acacias,
flow into the unforgiving landscape.

A lone traveler 
is drawn
to the sands of the wilderness,
to the radiating heat,
to the glitter
of the stretching miles,
to the tiring nothingness
which refuses to yield.
Like a drug,
like a death wish,
the desert sucks him inward
and consumes his soul.

In the evening hours,
the bedouins
dismount the humped beasts
and gather around the crackling fire.
A mute old man
points at the bejeweled night sky,
makes grand gestures with his dancing fingers
to perform for his wide-eyed grandson
the story of a giant bull
which gored a hunter in a thousand-day battle,
and stranger tales
about dwarf-like, honey-eyed creatures,
custodians of the bones of time,
dreamcatchers
who live, love, and ‘let-be’
in a labyrinth of tunnels
beneath the sands.
 
At bedtime,
the boy peeps out his tent,
and feels the space
between the sky and the sands
close in gently.
He stands on the edge of the dunes,
spreadeagle,
and basks
in the majesty of the moment.