Laments from the Road, Part 3 – Praia de Pedrogão

This time, it’s the dunes, not the plains,
my quasi-desert:
pine trees and shrubs over
– pale, yellowish-brown – sand;

it’s a thin veil of clouds, not the dust
that shrouds the skies in haze.

The road looks flat
but I keep slowing and slowing
until I’m moving in a frozen frame,
fleeing winter,
as if I could ever outrun

my loss.

 

 

 

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Laments from the Road, Part 2 – Carrión de los Condes

The plains are silent as we cycle through them,
and it’s almost a desert:

the endless, barren fields – harvested or burnt out – are the same pale, yellowish-brown as the old, quiet stones of the occasional (old, quiet) village we cross;

the sun’s beating down on us as if it were August instead of October;

the lines and shapes of the land are blurred in the haze.

It could almost be a movie scene –

and suddenly, for a moment, the tractor that turned onto the road right in front of me, breaking the silence, turns into a – pale, yellowish-brown – death machine sent by some nameless, dystopian empire

and the wind that whistles in my ear becomes a sentient, malicious force sapping away my strength as I push against it.

I’m almost afraid, in this liminal place.

Yet, I am not.

Because I am the wind.
Because if the wings on my back were real (and not just true), they would span the entire horizon.

Because this soundless almost-desert, bereft of colours, is but a weak, real-life reflection

of my inner landscape of grief.

 

 

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