The desert stretches away in every direction
beneath the stony outcrop: despite your will
you can’t escape its history, and you know,
regardless of the view, not endless.
Gold sands, caves where once upon a time
eremites and madmen. At one edge, like a hem
on ancient raiment, the Dead Sea splashes
its erratic blue, white chemical salts
not visible from here. Blood-soaked history
present in the sands, and absent,
like your own history, as if all your dead
had gathered in the gold and violent light,
and you knew their endless wonder
at the world ongoing on these hot dry winds.