Sand Singer

'The Sand Singer', a song of the desert by Serienna Alypsen

"She sat by the wayside, on the edge
 of the city, where the hard packed ground
 was just beginning to turn to sand.
 Fingers in the soil, she sat, and she sang,
 hot words melting in the day's sun,
 grains dripping through her fingers like rain."

"As she sang, from beneath her, the very ground
 began to tremble.  Her hands lifted more than sand,
 an old stone, a worn doll some child once sang
 her heart to, a faded coin colored like the sun.
 Objects startling in the desert monotony as rain;
 She began uncovering the treasure's first edge."

"She left behind her piles and piles of sand,
 grains whispering in falling their soft song,
 glittering like gems in a swaying sun.
 Then, the plop of the first drop of rain
 came in tune to the slim finding, an edge
 of glass sticking diamond hard from the ground."

"Moving swiftly, her deft fingers sang
 the rock from its hiding place, like the sun
 rising by her hand, effortless as rain
 falling.  More would follow, edge by edge
 emerging, bubbling up now from the ground,
 small hill forming on the new-damp sand."

"Clouds moved protectively over a struggling sun,
 ever determined to bring their hard rain
 -- that sun fought to his great strength's edge,
 but sure as stones poured up from ground,
 fat drops were lured to new homes in sand,
 and the woman still dug and sang, dug and sang."

"Gushing up now were shining gems in geyser's rain,
 rolling over one another they ran to the edge
 of the city, to the city itself, covering the ground
 with slicing new grains of dirt and sand,
 wet and rumbling along with storm's song;
 no mourning call for the defeated sun."

"Sand-people rejoiced in rain -- and later sun --, and condemned,
 their song ground in praise of one act, curse of the other,
 not able to find that precious between-edge."

The rhythmic notes of the song fall into silence.