Joan Kantor

Power

The Windmills of The San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farms in Palm Springs California

.

In celebration
giants stand
tall and proud
gathered together
in endless rows
atop jagged stone mountains
and on the dusty scrub-covered
valley floor

Slowly
steadily
they whirl their arms
in a rhythmic ritual
sinuous dance
overlapping hundreds of hands
to the hum
of the turbines’ chant

As wind transforms
and current invisibly flows

the tribal reverence for earth
Is finally heard

Lullaby
            Death Valley National Park

They come
in hordes

awed
by my angles
edges
salt flats
dunes
high canyon walls

They look beyond
the grey
to see the contrast
of my bright orange and aqua cliffs
and dark jagged peaks
against blue sky
and rolling billows of white

They don’t see
that like an oversized child
I only appear
to be old

and have millions of years
before me
when those edges
and peaks
will wear down

The crust
of earth
its moving plates
will rattle
crack
and fold my bones

Arid hot air
will blast me
with sand

Flash floods
dragging tons of debris
will scrape
my walls
and floor

But every day
in the late afternoon
when the sun shifts
before sunset

it offers me blankets
of dark purple shadow
whose softness unfolds
into crevices
and river carved bowls

as snugly
I welcome
its soft glow
of pink
and gold

till cradled
in the deepest of blues

safe
beneath
the nightlight of moon

I drift
into sleep
to the silent rhythmic tune
of blinking stars

Joan Kantor is a poet and educator. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and she recently took first prize In the Hackney Literary Awards. Her book SHADOW SOUNDS was a finalist for The Foreward Reviews Book of the Year Award and she has just had her second collection FADING INTO FOCUS, a memoir in verse, published. She has been a poetry consultant for The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival as well as a mentor and judge in its Fresh Voices poetry program for youth. Joan also does writing workshops with the elderly.  Her work has been in several ekphrastic shows and she performs in Stringing Words Together, a music and poetry experience.