Saharan memories

 
I imagine the day they
found a catfish in the desert
 
An archeologist winced at
an unforgiving sun,
stretched his neck
and polished another
fucking rock
in the stupid sand
and cursed the
sheer idiocy of it all
 
because it’s
drunken shit-faced dumb
to look for sea snakes
in the desert
 
But those intrepid explorers
found their evidence
 
About 100 Million years ago,
while T-Rex dropped shits the
size of smart cars,
the Sahara Desert
was a vast sea
 
The sea eventually
receded and birthed
verdant grasslands
around the time  
the workers rolled
Pyramid cubes to new eternity,
 
And sweet Sahara  
was still  
after millions of years,
rife with a new
variant of life
 
the rains
reinvented
her inherent beauty
 
but geologically
all at once
this life-filled
region
became a
barren wasteland
Incapable of sustaining
but the pale mote
of movement
 
In a place that
undulated like a love song
hot wind blows lamentations  
through cacti  
 
And I think of her now
like that.
(Sans frustrate archeologists.)
 
I think of her now
naked
and alone
countenance unchanged
as sands shift nowhere
for nothing
 
And I think how haunted
she must be
to have felt warm life
cocooning her through time
holding her
as grass and sea
skittered their secrets
across her skin
 
And I think how
it’s a blessing that it
rains so rarely in the desert
 
To spare her
the memories
 
You are cool rain
in a desert
my love,
every touch
revivifies my
shifting weariness
 
for I am the desert
who remembers
the grass
and you fall on me
just enough to make
me thirst for more
 
And I am the desert
who remembers
the ocean,
aching through time
to taste your salt
through my pores
once more
 
just once more
 
I dream of your body
in mine  as
you recede  
across today's horizon,  
and pray for soft rain  
 
for I am a desert
without you