Some words I feel

Here, in the Dead Sea, I feel possibility. I, who cannot swim, can walk on this water. Here, the sun prepares for its downward journey, slowly, painfully, like a warrior who has seen too much, done too much. Here, the echoes come from a faraway time to brush your skin. Here, nature opens a tiny window to give you a glimpse of her power. This water holds you in a warm embrace even as you drown in the haunting stories of the hills and the wind and the sky.

like the throb of a poem
written long ago
some words I understand, some words I feel

Driving towards Karak, that early Spring, he pulls over, suddenly. Look, he says, pointing to a clutch of black iris plants, standing tall, seemingly alone, on the side of a dry desert road. Fragile, strong, the colour of night, the luminescence of a newly formed sun, a flower I had never seen before. How many things have I met in my life that are made entirely of primal joy?

the daytime moon:
      as if a child glued it to the sky
                     eyes bright with mischief

Within minutes, the dust encircled us, the sandstone rocks seemed to melt, the rat-a-tat of sand on the car-roof was loud, incessant and terrifying. My first sandstorm came without warning to Wadi Rum. We drank tea as we sheltered on a rock. The most morbid of fears are tempered by a cup of tea. This much is true. Storms rage for hours. But then they pass. That too is true. Most life lessons are learnt on that thin edge between how things are and how they should have been. That can be true, if you allow it.

because
the night never ends
it just turns to morning

I leave Petra not through the imposing Siq, but through a longer, more difficult route- Wadi Muthlim, the dark canyon that might have once directed flash floods away from the city. Squeezing through narrow tunnels, clambering over rocks, following a dry river bed, I find my way back into the sunshine. Enough time to wonder about what being in a place where people lived in such magnificence 2000 years ago, tells me about my own life, about what someone or something will know about me 2000 years hence. What is a trail that isn’t a trail left in stone?

everywhere a pebble has been
everywhere a wave has been
a part of me has been there, is still there

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Jordan Travelogue… Dead Sea/Karak/Wadi Rum/Petra