Poem: Waterless

 

Waterless

 

a mile means nothing,

swallowed by a dry riverbed.

fish in the stones,

so it has always been:

the dead swim petrified

in waterless water.

and those false angels, the stars,

swim the oasis of night.

but the day is a mermaid,

she who won’t let me scream,

who stays nearby, blurry

through many happy, infinite

somewhat real encounters.

i remember, even so,

that it is not possible

to make love in the hot sand.

dunes aren’t tables or beds,

can’t hold an epitaph

like those clay tablet of old

safe somewhere in a museum.

there is no clay, however,

here in this dessicated contrivance, this

death-rich diorama

which those of us too weary to be wary

still sought to avoid.

but it will end.

such is the fate of archers

who shoot too-fast prey

from too-fast chariots,

burning the wheels to survive,

while they crush the bloom

of long-gone flowers

risen from a devil’s bread of stones.