Breathing the Light

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CAMEL COUNTRY -- BLACK flints, marly limestone, wells and ruins, hill villages, gazelle desert, rice-night, coffee-fire, cool upland stars crying








LITTLE SHELTERS, BRANCHES and palm leaves, deep neutral moon, breathing the light

IN DARKNESS, BANDS of air stirring, hot black air-narrows, lonely desert, immense shadow-dark doors above our heads, refracted shafts of sky across the great valley

TALK IN TENT of unknown stars, suns beyond suns, distance unseen -- stars behind world's end, turned on greater worlds

AT DAWN, DOWN a bank of chalk -- flint-capped hollow conical hills shine as snow in sunshine

SCOURED DAZZLING PLAIN of grey packed sand colors, porphyry, green basalt, pure white stratum carpet, particles caught like diamonds, hard glassy waves miles in front of us

OVER SUGAR-LIKE granular surface for miles up valley with knolls of green stone and green shadows blended

FLOODS OF WHITE, flat reach of earth, hum of flies hovering over veiled sleep

DELTA WADI BROODING, twenty miles away the great hills dancing, heat feathery, swelling sand

GREAT DELTA DARK in memory of flood, twisting across dried
beds -- beyond, the invisible sea -- the river a mile wide with banks of sand and clay divided, mud flaking, dead air

TEN MILES ACROSS one huge mud flat -- sunset cliffs red against the sky

MENTAL TIME AT nightfall -- stars drowning the plateau

FLAT MILKY STARLIGHT and cool air -- desert full of sounds, scents, ebb and flow of wind lifting dry grasses, horizon blacker than sky

FILLING UP TIME -- sleeping moon, distant noises, star-fever -- great dark lava range, black sandstone cliffs hanging in air-suspended stillness above the valley

EAST SLOWLY, INTO a distance-blue haze plain -- long shadows, morning river of sunlight poured onto every stone -- northward, a little later, over low desolate sandstone slabs ranged up to map a great strung bow

LAVA WAVES WITH a covering of cinder -- water-systems scoring yellow lines across blue-black land for miles, earth features colored as on a map -- scorched road, disordered causeways -- sand-laden ground, orange-rind sunlight, faded blue-grey basalt tetrahedra protruding from horizon, rubbed and rounded, forms embedded like tesserae

INLAID BLUE ROADS across clean yellow mud ridges, bars of blue-grey stone, a stretch of jet-black mud, crystallized fronds of metallic rock, lava gone iron-blue, shot through with bits of light

HOT SLEEP, FLIES, yellow tent-hole sunlight, dim ringing of coffee, tinny distant music, drum
of blood deeper than thought

EMPTY MIRAGE SPACES, heat waves atremble, light piercing crystal clear and blazing -- wild birds alarmed by our sounds in sudden flight across the lava fields -- hard swamp, blue walls, silent sunken palms

HUNDRED MILE ELECTRUM shield reflecting sunlight, wall against delirium -- open flint desert, blistering day -- shallow valleys with haze distance lit by pouring sun of late afternoon

EVENING LIGHTS OUT over the ridge, coming from the slopes beyond --- later black silent reek of smoke -- ferment of soil in steely desert wind -- cloistered air

A FLOCK OF desert birds divided high overhead in waves like chance-winnowed corn -- burning new moon pushed cautiously into hunting places, animals alert







MIDNIGHT LUNAR WHITENS landscape frozen shadowless -- night birds flying in wheeling circles -- then night empty again, tired laughter, sleep in wormwood

Atacama desert, Chile: photo by NASA, 2005
Shadows of camels, Sahara desert, Tunisia: photo by Alexey Krapukhin, 2004
Moon near mountains, early morning, Africa: photo by Bruno Befreetv, 2008
Southern edge of Sahara desert, Niger: photo by Dan Lundberg, 1997
Edge of dune slipface, Death Valley: photo by Jon Sullivan, 2006
Siwa desert, Egypt: photo by Isabelle and Stéphane Galley, 2007
Amguid crater, Sahara: photo by Bernard Devouard, 2003
Sand dust in desert, Africa: photo by Bruno Befreetv, 2008
Sahara: photo by Anthere, 2003
Valley of Oued Tensif, Morocco: photo by Alexandrin, 1970
Quena desert: satellite image by Cnes-Spot Image, 2006
Sunset, Wadi Ram, Jordan: photo by Askii, 2008
Dunes east of Merzouaga, Morocco: photo by Joadi, 2008
Dunes in Arakao, Sahara, Niger: photo by Michael Martin, 2004
Wadi Ram desert, Jordan: photo by Yves Picq, 2004
Permian ripple marks, Lac de Salagou: photo by Philidendula, 2005
Moroccan Sahara, Dra region, reg formed by metallic-oxide-blackened stones: photo by Alexandrin, 1970
Lava tube at Craters of the Moon, New Mexico: photo by Daniel Mayer, 2003
Sun over Sahara: photo by Jgremillot, 2005
Mirage in desert between Aswan and Abou Simbel, Egypt: photo by Remih, 2009
Desert and interior sea, Libya: photo by Bruno Befreetv, 2008
Moonrise, Algeria: Bertrand Devouard/Florence Devouard, 2004-2005
Judean hills: photo by David Shankbone, 2007
Rub' al Khali (Empty Quarter), largest sand desert on earth: photo by Nepenthes, 2008