Photograph of the Girl

The girl sits on the hard ground,
the dry pan of Russia, in the drought
of 1921, stunned,
eyes closed, mouth open,
raw hot wind blowing
sand in her face. Hunger and puberty are
taking her together. She leans on a sack,
layers of clothes fluttering in the heat,
the new radius of her arm curved.
She cannot be not beautiful, but she is
starving. Each day she grows thinner, and her bones
grow longer, porous. The caption says
she is going to starve to death that winter
with millions of others. Deep in her body
the ovaries let out her first eggs,
golden as drops of grain.

-Sharon Olds (1942-)

Sonnet XVIII - 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance of nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-William Shakespeare(1564-1616)

Inspiration from the Alchemist

The desert ate you my dear
Wind shaped horizons and prickly plants dot the stretching landscape
Wide and long and far as the eye can see
Empty earth beaten by the most relentless hands of the sun
Reminds me that you are not there.
On your bike you rode away
Searching for dreams and adventures and women and dances under the moon
But I see the desert
Before skyscrapers and track communities and irrigation took it away
And at least now, the view expands further into the sky
Where I look out for your return
Whether or not I fall in love in again with someone new
Even though I fear you will too
Or that the years will be so many
Undeterred
I will pray to the desert
Patiently wait
That the dry and absent air will carry you back to my open arms.
For both you and the sand have taught me a great lesson
Cherish every drop.
Your memories will be like morning dew that sustains the cacti
And I will walk alone along the edges of ancient river beds
that whisper to me
How time has turned seas to dust and dust to seas.

-Quinn Riddle (1980-)