A poem by Veetmoha (Tony Kendrew)
Six hours south of Tamanrasset
a line of blue rocks crosses the desert
like dragon’s teeth.
There is no blue on earth like that blue.
The wonder of that string of colour,
reflecting a lapis sky like puddles on a sidewalk,
awakens memories of earth for rain
and stuns the surrounding desert into silence.
Nearby, squatting in the dust,
where the last dry fish flapped in the mud and died
ten thousand years ago,
a blue heron stares at the ground
five hundred miles from water.
What glistening memory brings it back
to these rocks and wind-blown wastes?
A shot rings out between the cliffs.
Feathers scatter in the wind.
Red pulp is strewn across the sand,
staining the fossils of extinct shellfish.
Somewhere in the distance
the sound of a vehicle grows fainter.
And then the silence returns.
Tonight the jackal will come,
and tomorrow the vulture,
and in a year or two a traveler will pass by,
his face stained blue from the cloth
that wraps his head against the sun and wind.
He will look down from his camel
on a few white bones,
and calculate the time elapsed
and the method of destruction,
and move on,
the flapping of his burnous
unheard among the dazzling rocks.
No word is spoken,
but the circle is completed now,
a blue man on a dun camel has interceded,
and the bones and the rocks can rest.
From the poetry collection:
Feathers Scattered in the Wind
by Tony Kendrew (Veetmoha)
tonykendrew.com
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Featured image of a blue heron by Bob Walker on Unsplash
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