Floating Island

The flooded plains and "floating island" of the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah/ Photo by the author

It was no sacrifice
To follow you here
To empty, burning stretches
Where the eternal sky
Meets a horizon
Married with pure and spiritual
Quality

What do our eyes see
When they are filled
With such sights?
The passage of time
Which is greater than all
Our aspirations
Floating, floating floating

A form
Cradled in the firmament's
Gentle glow
Sends out its power
To strike a claim in my heart

How can we ever go back?

Let us keep to ourselves
The Mysteries of the ancient spirits
That haunt these stretches
Of salty, barren earth

Ghosts that wander
Seeking a drop of water
Send messages still,
Though their mortal forms
Have long since vanished

Where have they gone, gone, gone

I cannot touch
But with my wandering eyes
The beautiful curve of the earth,
Where sky falls into the lusty embrace
Of scintillating terra
Will they find release?

You alone brought me
To this hidden paradise
Where one can hear the
Footsteps of the Gods
Like giants

A crash of lightning
Stings the desert sky
An oasis becoming the
Fruit of my soul,
The acrid salt in my mouth,
The stillness, utter stillness
Ringing between my ears

I cannot go back
To my youth
To my first love's consummation
To innocence
To water washing the desert
Away

But I can, with you,
Come to this,
A frozen hot moment
Where the earth marries the sky,
Untouched by the brutal passage
Of time