The Air is Red

The grey-green haze of ersatz rain filled the air

It settled down in the hills where we heard the call to prayer.

“I will come to thee” fulfills a solemn hope.

So, it is echoed everyday.

And on high, across the teeth-topped mountains,

and down in the soft-sided waddi pathway

ribbons of young men wandered,

to the caller’s tent once again.

The Sergeant’s people murmured,

like the sound of pebbles falling.

Only a swirl of dust betrayed the lone observer.

The Sergeant’s headset crackled with the electric-static warning,

“The Air is Red”.

Then, the muffled muttering,

a scene of burdened men stumbling,

the fog of dust hovering,

and distorted shadows of men tumbling,

while a dark cloud sprouted from the dirt like a shroud.

It was the sound that “all the people may hear”.

So the Sergeant spoke his words aloud.

But the people stood far off,

and they trembled with fear.

Then,

the Sergeant approached “the thick darkness”

where God was.

And, there he knelt,

and and touching each one

in fear and wonder, he invoked

in nine lines,

A prayer.

But each one died.

Un-rescued at that riverside,

because the air was red.