Desert Daydreams

A poem by Barbara Swander Miller

A faded mossy gray woolen

blanket materializes

from miles away.

Issued to a

nervous draftee

sent to the middle

of windblown nowhere

to learn to fire a rifle and march

in the wilting heat more than

fifty years ago, it begins life

as a comfort and refuge

to one who feels alone.

~

Closer, closer.

~

Oh, it’s tossed over a pile

of tired toys abandoned

by two spirited

scamps before naptime;

this ugly, pilled blanket

homogenizes the hard

edges of molded plastic and

lumps of sparkling plushies,

transforming them into a panorama

of gentle hills and vales in

the high arid landscape.

~

Climbing, climbing.

~

Now, variegated in gray-green and ochre,

it disintegrates into patchy scraps

abandoned by a stalwart homemaker

trying to keep her family warm,

when the dust kicked up

and swirled into devils

that tempted the tumbleweeds and

filled her home with grit swept

into the floorboard cracks.

~

Higher, higher.

~

Ahh…it’s the scruff and scrabble of

the high desert looming above

with its sharp rocks and prickly stalks

reaching toward the endless sky

and tethered by shifting sands

and moaning winds

that refuse intruders knocking

at its weather-beaten door.

~

And down,

down.

Now gone.

~

Only blurry images remain,

the unlikely remnants

of my desert sojourn.