In its vast blue vault, the golden cup spills <br />over Earth's parched brow, unto its fevered, furrowed hills, <br />a clear ethereal wine, hot and pure, that mingles <br />with quietly devout, gaunt, prickly fingers, <br />humble supplicants cupping a rosary of sand. <br /> <br />In the darkness of their being <br />they silently gather silvery beads <br />that spill over like precious mead. <br />Prayerfully they clasp the scattered, quivering links <br />shattered like drops of quicksilver, pilfered from the land. <br /> <br />Amidst a waiting choir of mute green-robed <br />singers, the penitents' offering is a flower, <br />lush, white, tropical, formed in this merciless bower, <br />cradled with a silent psalm, <br />layered in the hush of dust, <br />on a leathery, wrinkled palm. <br /> <br />Hot blasts and blistering gasps caress <br />and scuplt raspy sighs, and they bless <br />this shimmering, kiln-baked realm <br />that moans and rends its own amen.<br /><br />Mary Naylor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/clay/
