Set to Rise: The Blinding Sun
More than is realized
The granite of reality is but shifting sand,
Particles in a shamal that storms this land
As did they
Who now are we:
Colonials in the cradle of civilization’s ennui,
Which ever broadens its horizons
In search of overturn,
Transmuting limitations
Into energy to burn
And well within the process
Meeting ghosts of fame
Who wander over deserts awaiting modern name.
Placid souls thirsting for moons of fertile crescent
Quench regret in memories of an Eden evanescent
And then gardens hanging
And then men hanging,
Finished with the blade;
No longer placid souls
But prophetic warriors made.
Ghost-riders
In the kicked-up earth of Islam’s lush mistrust
Haunt as metaphors of evolution that gave way to fossil dust.
Metaphors distanced metaphors:
Shem’s brothers driven to atone
With Christianity dryly floundering
As tilapia without a bone.
And, of course, Norman blood,
Everywhere,
In working veins as well as graves;
Even on rippling desert sands
Britannia ruled the waves.
The more that came,
The more remained
In time’s vapid, ghostly, ghastly realm:
A thirsting, circling, ship of fools with history at the helm.
It seems, now and forever,
A wide tourbillion around caravanning, living lore
Anticipating that trump
The Sun
Set to rise once more.
– Mary Jo Magar –