Poem: Tiel Aisha Ansari

Earth And Sand

It happened last night. This morning
I woke to find the bedroom full of sand,
marked with the delicate webbed tracks
of some creature native not to earth,
but air and water. Some bird, it could be
but not one I’ve ever (waking) seen.

I have no time for the unseen —
there’s work to do every morning,
and if I let it go, I could be
overwhelmed, drowned in the quicksand
of everyday life on earth.
My job is waiting — better make tracks!

A line of cars at the railroad tracks
waiting to cross — a sight I’ve often seen.
As I wait my turn, my mind unearths
memories of the hour before morning.
We were walking side by side in the sand.
You said, “It could be...”

What was it? What did you say could be?
Who were you, to leave mysterious tracks
on my heart? I count minutes like sand
grains in an hourglass. I stare unseeing
waiting for evening to swallow morning
and dreams to cover the earth.

I’ve always been so down-to-earth.
Not really the type who could be
found in bed dreaming all morning —
or wandering off to explore the trackless
untrodden shore of an unseen
ocean, over dunes of invisible sand.

But my shoes are damp and crusted with sand
and I’m losing my hold on solid earth
drowning under the weight of the unseen.
My dreaming echoes with sounds that could be
surf on rocks, or night trains on the tracks
and salt stains my pillow in the morning.

Into the bright morning I follow your tracks
believing you could be real, though never seen
one foot on earth, one foot on sand.


~ Tiel Aisha Ansari, who can be found at her blog Knocking From Inside.