a poem about Soup and Lettuce

On the black volcanic sand it rained,
on the Sahara white, the sky fell down,
yet not one grain soaked, no muddy ground
to tell of footprints under a nomad's moon
that swept by a roaring lions breath
arranged the landscape, valley and dune.

Snake tracks vanishing letters spun,
lizard feet wisped quick as a slithering tongue.

It rained one month the sky fell down,
yet not one grain soaked, no cactus cup
to catch one drop, condensed or not.
This silent irrigation, barefoot trod,
the red hot shifting map made dust
from lava turned to stone just for breathing air,

and there, a woman and baby, both so close to death,
cracked lips - how she longed for a taste of mud,

drained of every moisture bead, skin seamed,
rack of ribs, creaking bones, walked - one step,
one step, under a clear sky's fallen autograph.
Her baby held close by a fading scarf
made long ago by a Grandmother's hand,

knitted in the cemetery on the bench at Hoop Lane;
a grounds man by a wheelbarrow, smoking in the rain,
a memory plate of cut up fruit, eaten secretly at night
quietly in her tiny room surely kept them still alive,
walking through the blazing sun, so parched,
so close to death, not one more step to take: A mirage:

Visions of lettuce, sprouting from the sand
until unsure of truth or lie, oasis, sea or land,

one half coconut shell she did spy,
A few yards off in a shimmering heat of light.
A voice screamed from another land,
"Walk! I've cried every tear this desert lost
and have tried to stop the endless flood
for one half-filled shell of coconut.."

Then, like magic, there it was - soup in the sand,
and story told to children at a school:

A woman and baby so very close to death
are walking through desert isopleths
and find a coconut shell half filled up.
What should she do with this soup in a cup?
"Feed it all to the baby with her fingertips, Miss?"
is the innocent answer from a sweet child's lips.

So the woman takes the shell in her careful hand.
What would she do with the soup from the sand?



2008