Lizard Dance Poem by Krista TaltsNassehi

Lizard Dance

On a long forgotten road.
On a moonless desert night.
A lizard danced
on marble
ruins.

A scorpion
trembled blackly
hiding in a crack
in broken pillars.

We sat on broken stones, you
and I, hand in hand and spoke
of love under the starfilled desert
sky. Dizzy with desire, I touched
your face to anchor me before
I floated off into that infinity
of sky and stars.

You held me close and spoke of
far away things, of long lost
times: of kings and conquests
and offered me sweet wine.

Lulled by your voice, I turned
in your embrace and glimpsed
a strange mirage gush down
forty hand- hewn steps,
forty feet wide, a rushing
river gleaming with blood
and froth as men on horses
fought, swords in hand, face
to face, hooves pounding,
man and horse tumbling down
the steps in mute, foaming agony.

I closed my eyes and turned
into your embrace but before
I could, I saw soldiers in
bloody clothes, just above
the very steps where we sat,
you and I.

They danced and drank,
drunk with plunder,
poleax and war-
hammers
gleamed in the kiss of the
stars.

They spat pits here and there
onto the sand, arms akimbo,
legs trembling with conquest
or death under the moonless
desert sky.

You hushed me with sorrowful
songs of pomegranates, dates,
hyacinth and rose. How kings and
emperors lived and died, as did
their queens and concubines.

A landscape blessed by winds and
sands forms ever changing hills, buries
king and rogue and road alike.

Look, look yonder, you said– an
oasis! There it is, surrounded by
date trees. Born of spit and
blood and bones of long
vanished soldiers
vanished into the sand with
their poleaxes and blunder-busses
now reposing in time’s own grasp.

And here we love, you and I,
above man’s finest hours,
all broken by foolish greed
hidden by time’s sandy sweep
bones of beasts in a never
ending dance of ghosts
weeping east of the sun.

It’s all gone now, my
love, like the mirage it was
left only a lizard’s shadow
dance and the scorpion,
tail curved around its sac
of rage, and starlight
sprinkled on your hair.