Sandstorm Poem by Lois Read

The desert reared up in fury
battering the Nile people
with blinding teeth
that turned the sky to yellow.

Drawing their shawls tight,
they leaned into the wind
and continued their lives
boarding buses
weeding gardens
carrying children tight against them
accepting the rage
the biting sand
the gritty aftermath.

Glad smiles they lifted
to clear blue sky that followed,
ever knowing
the angry sand would come again,
but never when.

Seduced by the desert
I walked, cloak-less, into solitude.
As bright dunes drew bare feet
further into warm sand
half-buried stones whispered
of strong winds that once blew
rearranging all.

The clear calm concealed
the threat of change,
washed from memory
the other side of solitude
where indifference batters
loneliness embalms
and driving sand pocks my heart
to nothing.

I picked up a stone that day
which whispers now on my shelf
and I remember.