Alex Martin - Into the Desert

1. Into the Desert

What passes for speech is mostly inertia: coasting downhill
smoothly
after having mounted on others’ steam.

But what moves, and persists, from the heart, drives the rest of us also,
and those others, whose supply lines may be stretched too far

because They labor in remotest fields: in the most improbable reaches
of outlying Life
where once They were transported from what They were; and cannot
return.

But maybe They’ll slake their thirst, for a moment, when They need it
most,
and be restored; together with the powers which conveyed Them there.

Maybe once only, and far from here—or very near.

But we must find the reservoirs, the collecting points,
to pool those powers, and preserve them

for when the long Trains pass through
on their way into the desert.



I dream of being severed,
cut loose, & floating

down into the dark like a maple wing
spiraling out of the sun.

But the core, the seed inside,
wants out of its husk.

It’s like working on a stone bridge
made of stalactites

condensing, drop by drop,
out of dreams, out of the work done,

out of the tears of those
I’ve caused to suffer.

There is no stopping place, no turning point, no return.
I’m way out over it now, and the fall is endless.

But maybe, the Trains will pass over, with all their transports
through link on link, word on word,

that bear the vibrations, the massive connections, the recollections, in
chains—
the long supply lines trickling out of dreams into the desert—

that will not stop for me.