Desert Sun
The sun is passing over. Again.
Every day, again, the sun sheds its skin
—its scum, really, not unlike soap,
the kind that dials exfoliation up to nine—
on soil and rock.
Parched soil and jagged rock.
It seems to think they can be courted
to forget the misery of its central hour
and remember it kindly in the night.
But suns are pretentious like that.
And the rocks, they say, “Piss off,”
Only they can’t talk.
So every sunset they wait.
They wait for the sun to tilt off course.
One day it will tilt off course
Where the jagged rocks wait
And poke itself in the eye on the way down.
Night is the sweeter season by far.
Night is on their side.
Night hides them away from restless winds.
Well, not really, but it’s the thought that counts.
Night is benign. Moon is gentle.
Unlike the scummy sun, which stretches
And yawns and leisurely lights itself a match at the end of each turn
For a job very well done.
The rocks, they say, “Piss off.”
And soil sheds burnt sand in its eye.
Only the sea acts indifferent,
but it has it easy, being cool.
No, the sun isn’t terribly popular in these parts.
Every day, it laughed off the single-digit salute
and baked its leisure ever on westward.
(I have no idea where this came from. One day I was just watching documentaries on the desert and thinking of how the rocks and sand must feel, if they felt anything, and it started to be a story but I didn't have any real narrative thrust to it, so it became this weird poem thing instead.)
