Lay of the Land: Competitor Entry for 2012 Attys

ghazal: "Lay of the Land"

ghazal: “Lay of the Land”

Sailing alone and days removed from land,

The sun and stars and sky become my land.

We walk along the beach, I with my love,

Holding each other’s hands like sea and land.

The seagull floats motionless as a cloud—

When wind is high, she has no need to land.

Continents float on molten rock like bread—

We walk on bamboo rafts we call dry land.

Everything that is flows to the sea:

Rivers, melting glaciers, crumbling land.

Garbage, too, cascades into the sea,

Gathered into a swirling, plastic land.

As polar melt engulfs our shores and homes,

Great plastic islands may become our land.

A thousand years from now an alien race

Discovers Earth and has no place to land.