Poetry Archive
Deserted
The text is presented as written. Line breaks are preserved from the archived source.
Harsh and bright smote the noon sun's rays,
As waves of hot air rose shimmering above the sands.
Loud came the shriek of a hunting falcon,
Amplified and echoing over the desert sands.
Pools of water appeared just beyond reach, taunting,
Taunting mirages that dragged creatures to their doom.
Whirling pillars of sand rose to the skies, overshadowing,
Drowning and choking the very airs, in all their swirling majesty.
Through the curtains of sand I trudged on, ever forward,
Feet sinking into the moving sand, gasping in the heat and dust.
The very earth shifted and moved in the violent winds,
As waves of sand buried all that was and revealed new lands.
A dusty flaming sun sets into the clear west,
Sinking into the wrack of the shifting waves of dunes.
A dusty flaming sun sets into the smoky west,
Sinks beyond the rim of the earth and is gone in a flash of green.
Colder it gets with the passing time, shivering cold, as,
As I pull my wrap tight around me and move on into the eve.
Piercingly clear shine the stars in the moonless sky,
Silver starlight sets ablaze a frozen vista of sand mountains.
As starlight, unhindered, pierces through all the eye can see,
The temperature plummets to freezing cold, freezing,
Freezing all creatures that dare to move in the starlit night.
Incredibly wondrous, like a beaten silver platter, lies the desert’s hold,
As I pull my furs on and tight, and plod on into the desert cold.
This poem belongs to the poetry archive on Chips’nCode. Where surviving legacy material exists, the original title graphic is kept with the poem as part of the record rather than rebuilt into something newer.
Copyright © Manoj Prajwal Bhattaram. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used with clear attribution, these poems may not be copied, redistributed, adapted, or used to create derivative works without prior written permission.