DESERTS: Dead Sea Love - salt formations exposed at a retreating water level, 2019 and 2022
Netherworld
The Dead Sea brine seeps
into sinkholes, where the earth fell open
without warning. Blackened salt formations
conjure a giant clam; an octopus,
half buried,
with tentacles that can grab
still;
a dirty, fallen stalactite,
more like an amputated leg
I wander on damp, soiled sand,
seafloor mud laid bare
by the receding waterline
with deep, erratic cracks
like an icepack starting to thaw,
and fear myself adrift,
alone,
on a floe of earth
though I know one does not sink
in this sea of salt
Into the night I walk
as the blackening cliffs transform into bodies
torn
from their sisters across the Great Rift.
A solitary boatman
on the jigsaw-block of earth I pictured
drifting
in the bottomless brine
makes me wonder how much further down
the Kingdom of Hades would be
In time, I cease to dread the swallowing
pits, the earth
that caves in beneath my feet,
burying me
in an avalanche of dirt.
And now I laze
on the shores of a black
and stilled
under-earth sea, not caring to join
Persephone
in her spring awakening
*
Rita Mendes-Flohr
(published in Hawaii Review, Fall 2016 - Occupying Va)