Dunes cresting at 40 feet surround the villages, and smaller dunes form inside village
areas between mud-brick houses; village’s so-called sand women clear courtyards and
doorways of sand from dawn to dusk.
Where Dwelling is Kept from Dune, NYT


I

A coat of granules stains her
skin, her cuticles, eye
lashes, hair;

grains insert themselves
into each meal of millet

every peanut sauce she prepares.

II

Stronger than brooms,

it slips around Ottomans

bed rolls, engulfs

everything in the room.

III

The neighboring village
returns overnight
into nowhere.

IV

In quiet agility
sand slips between her toes,

over the threshold, and turns
small children to speckled ghosts,

their faces masked
as her family leaves this final outpost.

V

And again she begins her morning, an indigo scarf covering,

and again, the accumulation,
sweeping the just swept room.

VI

On the Sahara’s shore

in the language of drift and dune,

of harmattan and famine, she lingers.

VII

What can I do
I rest then I get up again
I keep removing sand.

VIII

When her body grows agate and rose, she moves with an eye of sand,

a burning, sabulous light -

-from the Sahel to Hibiscus Island, the grain’s the same

all arms and legs slipstream,
all ripple and flow.

- Susan Rich