Poem 4 - Desert Nights

DESERT NIGHTS
(For George Harrison)

PBS Reno
Just played
the Concert for George.
Stepping outdoors,
the moon is bright,
an incandescent ball,
glowing.

Weatherman said
"partly cloudy."
A sprinkle of stars twinkle
in the Northern sky.
The night is brisk;
the crunch of ice beneath my feet,
recalls a bundled up childhood
of sledding
down snow white hillocks
in a small Eastern town,
so far away in time and memory.
A gentle wind is blowing,
though most of the land
is now brown earth,
not snow.
It is the sound one remembers
long after the visuals are gone
Or going.

To see the night sky
in all its glory,
And to hear George Harrison's music
lilt across this high desert plain,
is breathtaking.
And to know glaciers were right here
long ago.
This was the very edge of them,
for a while.
A strong connection is growing.

Sitar strings sing
and reverberate
in this desert night,
his music still flowing.

Poem "Desert Nights" © 2004 Sharmagne Leland-St. John. Author's note: I wrote Desert Nights for this skinny guy who used to sit next to me at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music where we studied with Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar and Sadruddin Khan. The skinny guy was George Harrison.