It’s thousands of years since the pyramids rose,
capped with white marble to make the nights glow.
Now silent and stripped, did they once shelter man?
Store the stars’ light? Were there rivers that ran
west through the dunes where palm trees now stand?
Tell us, you ancients, of what you have seen
frozen in stone under Sirius’ gleam?
Look to the stars in the night as we do,
hearing the wind as it winds its way through,
seeing the planets and moons and their kin,
scanning the places our builders have been,
waiting their signal so we can begin
singing them songs of the desert and plain
calling them home from their travels again.
Songs that hold star-scatter, sand-drift and streams,
washes of sunlight and underground springs,
temples and palaces, what the wind sings,
loneliness, silence and space-chilled moonbeams.
© 2022 Susanne Donoghue