Spirit Circle

Abandoned Promise

I thirst for god, the promised water.
The springs I drink from are pools of mud.
The low wells yield a brackish drink
thick with salt and rotting matter.
I walk in barrens.  My skin is caked
with salt from my sweat.  Sand crusts in my eyes.

I cry challenge to god the promiser.
"Why have you left me broken in this bitter land?
Here sun has bleached the bushes white
and bordered the leaves with brown.
The hot sand glares like amber glass.
The copper sky sears like a skillet.
The winds bob and weave in the thistles,
spreading their thorny seeds on the sand.
I walk this place and stir up dust.
It fills my throat and clogs my nostrils."

God does not answer, preoccupied
perhaps, or dead, or harrowing hell
or otherwise divinely bemused.

I stumble over the mountain's bones
crying through the parch in my throat.
One day some other unfortunate
will stumble over my brittle bones
and fall face forward in the sand and thistles,
and I won't care I'm no longer alone.

Next Poem:  "Villanelle for a Silver God"
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Updated last on:  2001/05/22