Rock and Sand
By the time you stopped running
You were out in the heat,
Where the miles
Of rock and sand calmed
First your eyes
Then your heart.
And you felt at last —
As the looking at
The retreating past
Showed, by its view with no ghosts —
It was so far behind that
(Lost in the dust),
Even the warning
That things in the glass
Are closer than they seem
Had no power to alarm;
It’s easy to not look at a thing
Too small to be seen.
The problem, though
With desert roads
Is that they cross (don’t stay)
From where you were
To some other place.
There, whatever you are
Will find you out.
And even though no-one
But the “lost To all good society” —
The hungry within —
Would want to circle with
The eternal vultures
In the light-bleached emptiness
And shimmer,
You with your hollow soul?
Better you turn off the road,
Hide among the rocks,
And live within the sand.
