Of Water and the Soul

Of Water and the Soul by L. Edgar Otto

You who have defined yourself by work
have worked to define yourself

The nomad is at home in the desert sea
anywhere the Ley lines for his soul

He walks between minurets, Plato's oasis
raining dust and water down the babbling zigarettes

Although the book is sealed the mortals
have to make pilgrimage, climb the spiral

The racing camels have to hide themselves
against donkey herders under shrouds of cloth

For the first disembodied dream seeks the equator
to relieve cascading garden water on Pharoah's brain

Science cannot flourish in the next incarnation of Heaven
if our concrete deserts dry and fixed are bound by sands

* * *

After floods the moshies awaken damp seven year petulance
past the droughts ticks spread their West Nile fevers

The window to our soul only in spring and fall its basket of reeds
by the river lovers kissing grapes need only stars to shield them

Do not meditate upon yet face your depths of evils for only in
gentle rain, its spring and fall, can we learn we are immortal

In your heart you know it is not I who tell you this
but the broken gods who madden us will hold it against us.

* * *