The moon is warm tonight, not breeze
enough to stir the vanes of the wind mills
grouped in groves of their own out beyond
the manicured lawns and stands of palms
which ring this landscaped spa oasis.
I take them first as sunflowers basking
in a pewter glow, swinging toward
not light but the slightest waft, their roots
seeking the moisture said to seep along
the fault deep under this parched basin.
Then before me there prances among
the baobabs on the dessicated bed
of some Lake Chad a herd of giraffes,
their graceful gait stirring flocks up into
fluttering flight, the piebald quilts of their
dappled hides furling like ships’ sails,
spangles on water where there is none.
As they lope, they dream of other giraffes
inscrutable dreams I can never know
even as vaguely as I know my own.
Today you looked especially sad, pale
arms clasped to your calves. Hush, I said.
No tears here! Stop believing in the rain!
Imagine instead flowers as giraffes, baobabs
as tumbleweeds perched atop thick stalks.
*
Inspired by a Nicolai Gumilev poem (Жираф), insofar as it echoes some of its lines and also embraces the swerve of focus at the end to the sad lover, who believes in rain in the midst of a desert.
My version is set near Desert Hot Springs, in San Gorgonio pass, one of the most expansive wind farms in North America. I have only a day shot of that scene, where the herd of giraffes can be seen as a mere white smudge on the horizon.
No, I don’t know Russian but had the repeated pleasure of a dear friend who, after our weekly trysts, walked me line by line through her favourite poems in Russian, including others by Gumilev’s wife Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam and even Pushkin.