The Sunday Poem: Semi-Desert by Will Eaves

I am wondering if brown-orange boats

can float or if the ancient sea will sink them. 

And I’m wondering when the trumpets

of my amaryllis will sound or if, pressed up 

against the dark window and turned away 

from me because their grief’s too great,

it’s all they can do to flower.

I am a speck on a pixel shed by the sun.

Does that make me hysterical or obsessive?

Neither, give or take. It seems there’s nothing

to do but wonder, at a torchlit cactus found

being crude, or the dry land whirring.

Will Eaves is a novelist, poet, teacher and musician. His books include the novel Murmur (Canongate) and the essay collection Broken Consort (CB Editions)

Illustration by Chris Riddell