Voices of the Desert Winds

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“The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Ozymandias, Shelley.

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Ah… And there it is, my friend— “A disembodied thought,”
Found, we’re told, under a soldier’s boot,
Though some have said it is not a thinkingness
But a yearning for the life that held it.

And there, just there, a bit of quartz
As white as cataracts.
As final rays of sunlight, caught and held:
Black clouds boil across the afternoon sky
Eclipse the sun and day falls into night.

Or so a lone survivor told.
But she was blind, it’s said.
She lived another day or two
The legend goes, to say who won.

Though who would care, I wonder?
Surely not the dead.

But we, yet living, release the past to where
All pasts must dwell, recover hope, however faint,
Rekindle life, wherever present, harken to the desert
winds, their voices—those of Allah, HaShem, Jesus,
L. Ron Hubbard, and others.

And having listened, having formed our own thoughts,
Consulted with prayer and vision,
Rejoice, rejoin, reclaim our own lives.
Today, we are returned.
Today we are alive— and come and go in peace.

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For clarity, the expression, HaShem, meaning “the Name”, is used in Judaism to refer to God when not in prayer.