Night comes to the desert sky.
The moon,
a soft, soapstone orb,
nestled in its crib of diamonds
and black satin clouds,
floats high above the sand as
it casts its delicate light onto the ocean of dunes.

How did it come to this? The warrior muses,
As his watery blue eyes scan the dry moonlit gulfs,
His gaze washing over the shimmering peaks
and coarse, powdery valleys of this land
seemingly forgotten by God so long ago.
In the distance, the angry cawing of a carrion bird crosses the thin desert air,
Alerting its brothers to fresh-found butchery,
oceans of thick red gravy staining the pale sand
the color that is human misery.

The warrior winces and in that self-same moment:
The color synonymous with suffering seeps through the cleft in his dull iron shirt.
Sticky and hot
it binds his fine linen tunic to his parched, sun-ripened skin
in a clotted, clumpy paste.
Soon the birds will find him too and it will be his body they open to the stars,
Pecking and tearing at his haggard frame in their greed,
Their claws and beaks dripping until,
Fat and lazy, they spread their wings and lift
Their stuffed skins into the sky, leaving nothing of the man but a sun-bleached shield
And waxen bones.

It was not always so.

For a moment the armed man closes his eyes and remembers.
He remembers the sun,
the pale northern sun
Bathing the bitter black earth, polishing it and caressing it
until the flecks of mica and schist buried in the soil
shone like jewels at the bottom of a dark lake.

He remembers a golden field,
The milkweed and wheat alike
Turning their heads at the urging of the wind,
dancing upon the breath of God.

He remembers a church,
Gray slate pillars climbing towards the sky,
And descending into the bowels of the world,
A building so awesome and terrible that nevermore will he question that it is indeed
The dwelling of the Lord.

He remembers a girl with black hair,
charcoal ringlets framing her pale face,
The long, delicate locks
Twirling nervously between her fingers as she,
Biting her lip,
Gives a tentative smile,
Urging him on to still greater deeds of glory and foolishness
As her friends laugh in the distance.

The warrior trembles.
The soothing tendrils of the cold night air caress his skin
Like the half-forgotten touch of a distant lover.
Soon it will be night in the desert,
But in spite of it all,
He closes his eyes,
And is not afraid.