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Camel
by Steven Craig
A power graces the warm afternoon,
sweetening the life of a young woman
that leaped out her back door
to visit the grasses of her private garden.
She wanted to run in the hills
and forests, the mountains,
so that the wind would feel it has the company
of another who understands the brief freedom of the valley.
Her hands grasping happily at the breeze,
her hair flowing with the bounds of her step.
She would imagine that a piano
is quietly expressing the passing clouds,
the ones that on lazier days,
she looked at as she lay on the grass
and wondered what shape it would take
if it carried her away to a distant land.
Some were seen as camels
slowing crossing the desert hills,
the scuffs of sand blowing by quickly at their feet.
Others were flowers that bloomed so quickly
and faded faster in the sun.
Briefer still were that calico cat
and the pillow it slept on,
blown by an unseen wind,
to take it to those places
where she had never been,
except
in dreams
that she shared
only with the clouds.
When at times,
the pools of rain gathered at her feet,
the same clouds were the ones
that ended the day,
and brought the night,
that quiet dark time
where the dream was refreshed
and made new again.
It was there that she ventured
to the break of her new day,
waking to travel again
to the soft grasses,
to lay there once more
and hum the music of her thoughts,
her dreams,
her one moment
when she was still home.
As she rode away on her camel of vapor,
there were days and days
holding puppies in her hands,
and nights and nights
where the storm never did find her.
Her camel took her
to the mighty mountains
and crossed the heated sands
that warmed her feet.
She dreamed that one day,
one would hold her,
tightly,
carefully,
with all the strength
that the mountains would speak of.
The camel would turn
as she spoke the words
to hurry,
for a light was breaking
on the edge of her life
where the quest was to one day end.
Nothing ever ends
when your clouds carry you away
to the mountains
to the shores,
no song sung is ever the same
as the one you sang the week before.
In all that time
you felt the smile
and the joy of growing up
to touch the sky,
to hold onto your camel
before it turned again
to be just another chased cloud,
just another shadow
passing over the earth.
The reigns in your hands
were there only for an instant,
and the camels eye turned again
to what it was that it rushed off to alone.
She laid there in the golden grasses
and remembered that one day,
someday,
when that camel returned,
she would be grown,
and ready to travel with her camel
to her journeys end.
There will be lightning
there in the storm,
the rain will again make puddles
at her feet,
but she will remain steadfast to her dream,
and she will chase down
the white camel steaming in its breath
to leap the final barrier
between her being here today,
and all of her tomorrows,
just over there.
03/25/2008
Posted on 03/25/2008
Copyright © 2024 Steven Craig
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Mara Meade on 03/26/08 at 08:33 PM Being one who loves camels, I couldn't help but read this poem; I am without words as I slip it onto my Favourites. Beautifully expressed! |
| Posted by Jo Halliday on 01/28/10 at 05:25 PM Maybe the best poem I've read in my life! A little more finish here and there, ok; maybe some images different, but the heart of this is golden, and you have managed to achieve this most remarkable feat. Thank you for giving such a wonderful read. |
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