Reflecting on a recent pilgrimage through the Moroccan desert, Angus Ayaz Landman shares a poem of sand and fire…

What the Wild Teaches

Is sovereignty

How each of us

Can come to find

A radiant beauty

Not by what we do

But by relaxing into

Who we are

As algorithms of the stars

Brilliant in our veins

The Making of Sand

Empty pages

Flap in the wind

In the sovereign silence

There is no history

There is only the cracking

And polishing of stones

By the sun

You see the making of sand

Is a long business

Shaped and re-shaped

By surrender

A Named Place

Aching for green

I have been longing

For a named place

A place to net and catch

The cool that is the tenderness

Of the breeze

The sun when it’s low

And sweet in the sky

And the singing voice I had

Before I was born

Taking the Embers Home

There is no roof

There are no sides

I love this place

That takes me

To the heart of myself

Petals collect in soft

Cupped hands

While tree limbs

Tough

As the ages

Are bleached into silence

I love this place

Where I am reminded

By the wild extravagant solitude

To live with the living

And take the embers home.