Deserts of the Morelleans

 

 

The deserts of the Morelleans
furthest along the galactic rim
lost amid extinguished suns
beckoned me with rippling waves
of heated earths and rocky spires
reaching toward the sky’s pink aura
above its dust and winds that sing
of cataclysmic meteorites
and torn asteroidal rings
that arc across the star-specked sky
an archway to my wanderings... 

In pursuit of a unique collection

of shiny high-energy space debris

I find a piece of dull misshaped

inscrutible inert scrapped twisted metal

made with no other particular purpose

than to add a bit of variety

to my accumulation of space ejecta

strewn about the galaxy...

I've hitched free rides

through space and time

in pursuit of these trite oddities;

yet here it's quietude I find, and peace
when the planet is not upheaved
quaking as it forms and cools
in aeons longer than the trails

I weave when hitching random rides

between the dawn and twilight’s ruin;
meeting up with ever-stranger
beings of trade and beings of danger
I share their muted consciousness
as they employ me far and wide

to lend my creative energies

to profitable space-born undertakings…
yet in this sandy place I find
though barren scapes run planet-wide
clarity upon this dim-brown world;
so I wander, then return

as my work and journey ends
amid the distant arms that bend

throughout the spiraling galaxy...

--Reptile men, colonists,
miners, traders, solar-sailors
all pay me highly for my skills;
yet my mind is ever transient
while hitching rides in space-time bent
between black holes from supernovae
reaching with their tendril arms
to transform matter straying near
into ectoplasmic-pressed debris;

I, from such colds and darks retreat
back to this desert planet’s feet
planted in the Milky Way
beyond the Magellanic Clouds
atop a heated nebula
emanating from a shroud
of forming stars amid the clouds
meandering through the trading lanes

of interstellar colonies...

Yes, I return here to the sands
furthest along the galactic rim
and lose myself, like a tiny grain

in the deserts of the Morelleans.