Desert Ruin, by Neil Creighton

Desert near the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, photograph by Neil Creighton (Australia). Contemporary.

Desert Ruin

Trees huddle in dry, rocky creek beds.
Beyond the horizon's heat-haze
the distant mirage shimmers
and the Flinders Ranges
rise suddenly in knuckled lumps.

In the stark beauty
of this barren world
a single ruin crumbles,
a doorway and a few walls
all that remain of a dream
that sparkled, sweated,
flickered and died.

Then, beneath the dome
of cloudless blue 
or star-littered black,
the flat land shrugged off 
the puny human scratches
and returned
to its harsh eternity.

Neil Creighton

Neil Creighton is an Australian poet with a passion for social justice and a love of the natural world. Recent publications include "Poetry Quarterly", "Silver Birch Press", "Praxis Online", "South Florida Poetry Journal" and "Verse-Virtual", where he is a contributing editor. His poetry blog iswindofflowers.blogspot.com.au