Ariel

The wind, making ridges in the sand as it drifts, today in no hurry

My father’s arm out towards it, hand flat, saying how beautiful is our home

And I see it, in the relief of the tiger-stripes’ shadows against each other.

I love beautiful things, think about them often.

The fabric of my clothes, the setting sun, a flower he brings me from the city,

Sometimes my father asks where I got such hungry eyes.

Water, a big green button of it in a valley with still trees,

I have finally found something more beautiful than the desert,

and a boy. Make it two things.

We don’t stay long. Father points again, at our long blue shadows on the dunes, says how beautiful is our home,

But the shadows aren’t blue enough.

Earth too gray, sands too soft, too shifting,

too easy to go to sleep in one place and wake up in another as the world moved around me,

and I have to leave.