Egyptian Priest Watches the Desert – a poem by Patricia Nelson

Egyptian Priest Watches the Desert

I see what the gods have meted out
and feel a longing,
a thirst that opens like a leaf   
 
to all the sunken things that ripple
in this hot, white shimmer.
The unquiet harp of the sand,                    
 
its peaks so beveled that
they blow in grains around me.
The ending of a mountain, edgewise on my skin.
 
In the sky the lighted objects roll,
leave on the ground their different darknesses.
The canted shapes I use to measure
 
the many sizes of time.
Then I don't regret the smallness
I am made of, or the unlevel gods.

Patricia Nelson writes Neo Modernist poetry from the San Francisco Bay Area, USA. Her new book, Monster Monologues, is recently out from Fernwood Press.