We ate rich brown fruit,
drank water from skins
beneath shade of the cyprus and willow.
The cold river ran neatly
in its banks.
Distant tropes of prayer drifted
over us, much as ash sifts across
the cava leaves
at Krakatoa.
My fingers plunged the fiber,
I cracked stones between my teeth
and checked were you still sleeping.
A rare tiny emerald scarab lit on your lip,
consumed an invisible morsel of the fruit you'd eaten,
unsheathed its wings and fled on a series of golden clicks.
For the briefest moment I saw my god in you.
A sand fly bit our dozing guide on the ankle.
He cursed aloud and slapped furiously,
scratched a gouge across the earth.
A resting camel spit ambivalently
onto the Sinai, inure
to the sweetness of your fruit or the
terminal dis-ease of our guide.
You came around as a baby from an afternoon nap,
fat and groggy with the intensest lucid dreams of daytime sleep,
disconsolate to be woken for this.
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