Sand Dunes

The dunes are moving!
The sand is racing, sliding, gliding,
Moving mountains with insatiable appetite;
And Joseph lies in their persistent path,
Hand curled in death's rigor,
His life's red wine pouring out into the moving sand.

Gunshots blast about me!
The shrill wind cloaks the bullet's whine.
My enemies lie concealed within the grit-filled rushing wind,
As intent on my destruction as I on theirs.
I avert my gaze from Joseph's sandy grave;
My cheek is burned again by flying grains.

I fear to move!
The furnace heat beats at my eyes
And the hot wind sighs but does not cool,
While Joseph's lifeless hand beckons.
As crystalline grains hiss up the slopes,
The mountains advance, but I am paralyzed.

The dunes move!
Joseph's corpse is half consumed
And yet his hand still sticks above the sand,
A drowning swimmer in an arid sea.
His hand attempts to lure me out of hiding
But I know there's nothing there save pain and death.

I move my foot despite my fears!
I am racing, sliding, gliding,
A gazelle bounding across the face of a dune;
And I stretch to grasp dead Joseph's hand,
To free him from his sandy grave,
But nothing's there for me save pain and death.

The dunes are moving!
The crystalline grains hiss up the slopes;
Joseph's hand becomes my own;
The swiftly drifting sand blots out the hellish sun.
All is swallowed by the marching dunes and darkness falls
Upon the withered hanging gardens of Babylon.