Moab's Hills

        All the hills
        in a prophet's eye...

        In our Land Rover,
        we leave the low, flat landscape
        that holds the shimmering Salt Sea.
        
        The smooth straight road
        reaches up into the mountains,
        where it wraps itself tightly
        into curves following contours.
        Knolls rush up at us only to fall
        sharply away, arising as other hills
        farther on, farther up emerge,
        both steeper and softer.

        Eyes scan across yet another
        canyon as we careen,
        always on edge; and suddenly-
        huge faces in the rock emerge,
        like Mount Rushmore,
        but no man-made chisel carved
        the stunning contour of features
        set to emanate from the avalanche of time-
        the avalanche of fluent rock erosion,
        staring back at me.
        
        Craggy, weather worn, furrowed faces
        watching with eyes that are nimble shadows-
        shelves and slants and surface
        gnawed by time and tale.
        The road leaps sharply up and
                                        

        I look down deep rocky
        chasms, that approach
        with lurch and loom
        and sloping plateaus
        sprigged with stony pasture:
 
        Each relatively level patch
        bears one lone shepherd-
        Bedouin robes draping him
        with historical allusions.
        
        Black rocks become a tumble of goats.
        White stone stubble...browsing sheep.
        Height-depth-dark-light-
        nothing seems anything
        except ancient.

        Even recent excavations
        (crude surface mining)
        has the appearance
        of an archaeologist's mound
        divulging treasure;
        gnawed by time and tale.

poem copyright ©2000 Anne Selden Annab

Colors Of Dust

        Colors of Dust,
        of gloom and glow-
        Colors of dirt and rock
             and centuries
        of stumbling
        looking skyward.
        
        How the stars must
                have figured,
        sharply delineating direction
        amid these softly mounded
        mountains that
        crumble
        with pebbles
        and goat turd.
        
        The Bedouin tents are pitched
        Huge woolly rooms
        swaged to keep out
                sun
            wind
        eyes
        
        watching us
        zoom past.

poem copyright ©2000 Anne Selden Annab

Blond Bedouin

        Blond Bedouin child-
        is it the dust of ancient rock
        or a distant ancestor
        from the crumbling
        crusader castle...
        What has given you,
        sweet child wide eyed
        watching us
        zoom past,
        what has given you
        that halo?
        Wheat- gold
        like bread
        that's not been baked,
        still on the shaft
        growing
        like you...
        Will you be blond woman
        head covered to hide
        from strong sun,
        and strangers' eyes
        will never know
        of the angel's halo
        still round your head
        that's grown into a river
        of wheat falling
        down a brown back.
        Sweet child wide eyed
        sturdy like the soil,
        you stand
        like rock itself-
        your skin
        brown and dust,
        but all I see
        is halo
        wheat gold
        shimmer song.

 poem copyright ©2000 Anne Selden Annab

To ride a camel

        To ride a camel
        is to smile and nod
        at the bedecked Bedouin
        and his equally bedecked beast:
       
You signal with a coin
        and he signals with a stick
        and the great beast bends his knees backwards
        settling to the ground in a most unsettling way.

        You reach up with your leg
            over the camel's steep back,
        and hurl yourself astride-

        Hold on, eyes blaring and nose blinking
                                       as the mountainous beast lunges forward                 

 then back 

                    and up 

                                            and all at once and you are higher
                    than any head
                    and your heart is pounding
                    pounding pounding
                    from the unexpected shift
                    that seemed more like a spill-

        And what's most frightening
is knowing that getting down
        will be exceptionally more disconcerting.
               

poem copyright ©2000 Anne Selden Annab