#MIDDLEBURY
White Sands
Arthur Sze
– Walking along a ridge of white sand –
it’s cooler below the surface –
we stop and, gazing at an expanse
of dunes to the west,
watch a yellow yolk of sun drop to the mountains –
an hour earlier, we rolled down a dune,
white sand flecked your eyelids and hair –
a claret cup cactus blooms,
and soaptree yuccas
move as a dune moves –
so many years later, on a coast, waves rolling to shore,
wave after wave,
I see how our lives have unfolded,
a sheen of
wave after whitening wave –
and we are stepping barefoot,
rolling down a dune, white flecks on our lips,
on our eyelids: we are lying in a warm dune
as a full moon
lifts against an ocean of sky –
About this poem
“White Sands, in southern New Mexico, is the site of the world’s largest gypsum dune field. In summer, the sunlight can be blinding; the temperature can rise to over 100 degrees. At sunset, when the sand is cooling, it is marvelous to walk along a ridge, and I’ve used this physical edge to explore memory and desire.” – Arthur Sze
About Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze is the author of “Compass Rose” (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Santa Fe, N.M.
This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Imagine Your Parks grant. Imagine Your Parks grants celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service and the 50th anniversary of the NEA by supporting projects that use the arts to engage people with the memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System in 2016.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Arthur Sze. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
