Desert Wine

It’s a strange thing,
To see a chasm open in the desert,
A green valley below.
Pomegranates the size of skulls,
The size of the ones a few caves over.

Behind is the Land of Wells,
Qanats, a line of spaced holes
Pushing air to an underground stream.
Leading the stream to where it needs to go.
Just like wine,
A little air makes water taste better in the desert.

There are some other gifts under there.
What would they call those gifts now?
I reckon that’s a question,
With which we’ll have to reckon,
For as long as we’re left to breathe.
It seems like everything has a cost here now.
I imagine the cost will be addiction.

But it won’t be from the wells,
Not from water,
No matter how much fermented,
It never stops sustaining us.

A local friend told me of a few gems,
That keep turning up in the mountain to the east,
Big enough for crowns,
For courts of kings and queens.
A local proverb, graffiti etched into a former grotto:
“A jewel is most beautiful in its home. Earth is its mother. Let them be.”

More and more machines here, I notice.
More than last time.
More languages too.
I usually love languages.
But too many warning signs here of trespassing,
Makes me think this place will soon see its last morning.

It’s a shame.
All this time spent,
Dredging up the earth,
Only to bury ourselves deeper within ourselves.
I suppose there will be a cost to that too.

Prepare the Last Rites now,
I propose.
What’s in the earth will be there no more.
That which is above will have to find another place to call home.
I remember a verse of a short prayer they chant here.
I’ll change it though, to the only language I want to know.
“Love begets not, nor is it begotten.”
In the Land of Wells, I worry this will be forgotten.

— Ziggurat