Who I am today

In my head, the sands of Tin Merzouga blend
their red with the purple heathers of Alba.
My heart has bled its contradictions,
its longing nostalgia.

I did not choose to live alone
but alone I chose to remain.
Far winds have blown me home
but I miss the open plain,
sun drenched bones,
the joys of monsoon rain.

Life’s experiences, good and bad,
made me who I am:
this peter pan,
this lover of life, this supporter of Oxfam.

Not one for looking in the mirror,
not through fear or dread,
I know what’s there, I tread
happy in my skin,
my soul within sings each day
to the beat of the distant tambour.

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© Sheila Ash 19^th March 2017

Desert Larks

Two balls of dusky camouflage
lost to their playful scurry
I am in no hurry
to rise
to disturb these twin juvenile desert larks
rolling and cavorting in the dawn light
their trills crescendo into my wake up choir.

The frenzied fluster of flapping wings
tickles my nostril.
I am still,
fossilised,
except for watering eyes
from my smothered sneeze
stifled into my own down.

They dance and play
oblivious to my awakening.
Not threatening,
I lie
watching in wonder and awe
expecting the breeze to rustle them
off into the distant dunes.

Two balls of feathered ancestry
as ancient as pharaohs
as fluffy as the angora boleros
of my childhood
full of comfort and warmth.
the birds’ sand bath grains rise
like the sparks of last night’s fire.

© Sheila Ash, 13^th March 2017

Note: I think these were Ammomanes deserti whitakeri, the South Algerian desert lark. One morning in the Sahara I woke up to a pair only six inches from my nose.

The last word

We didn’t realise till too late. The rise in doctor’s visits was probably the first sign, more complaints of tiredness put down to rat-race stress. The rises in early onset dementia, in early menopause, noticed but unexplained. McPherson’s article on the epidemiology of progeroid syndromes was missed outside a small circle of academics. The tabloids only got the story when their own staff succumbed. World governments had already sequestered scientists to find cause and cure but they too succumbed before much headway was made. No time for panic to set in as the problem spiralled exponentially out of control. Children born on Monday were adult by Saturday and dead in the week. Reproduction all but ceased, the fabric of society as our grandfathers had known disintegrated in the increasingly frantic scramble to eat and procreate. My child will be born today. I won’t hear its cry, humanity’s final word.

150 words