I am eating sand

I am eating sand

Swallowed with every breath

Coating my throat

Grit enough to grind stone,

Powder food,

Without the need to chew.

The wind buffets from

Either side

Coughing fit to bust a gut

With eyes streaming

I am a plainsman

Trailing through Nevada

Burning through an Egyptian sky

Blazing with John Ford

Reuben Lean

There is no wide-angle lens

This is a fishbowl

I swim around in circles

Blinded by the sting of minuscule

Wind-blown missiles.

The weather report echoes

In my ears

The hottest July in years

Sandstorms in Tobruk

Desert rats

The water carrier

Beating a retreat to the sound

Of a distant drum.

No bucket

No respite

Playing mudpies

Just the blowing of the wind.

The power of the storm

Blinking in and out

With the fizzing of the lights

The drop in pressure

As the sky lies flat

The noise of a sad surrender

To the void.

Sand is beating

Its way through my brain

I dream of being

Ice cold in Alex

I am John Mills

Wasn’t he Scott of the Antarctic?

I will be gone for some time.

Before the answer comes to me

Boomeranged by way

Of Great Expectations

And a colonial dream

Of discovery.

Whatever happened to that

When all is said

Every grain of sand

Is more ancient than me

All history

Filtered through my fingers.

I walk on eggshells

Seashells alive alive-o

And as the wind blows free

I am carried further away

From the foreshore

Closer by far

To a sandbar.

Where I tip a glass to the nomads

Samaritans and wanderers

Who have shadowed my good fortune

And showed me the way

To go home.