Desert Flower

No life.

No water.

Silence.

The desert, a place so distant, so vast, timeless. Like a white sheet of paper. Unforgiving. Its beauty disturbed by any small hint of green. No life. What a false assumption those city-dwellers have. There is life in the desert – most of it however is hidden, fragile, scarcely sprinkled over thousands of square-miles.

Water. There is even water. Little of it, precious drops, often deep below the surface – beyond the reach of any single thirsty soul. Invisible to the eyes that know springs and rivers and lakes.

Silence – yes. There is silence to the ears tortured by the sound of constant explosions emitted by thousands of combustion engines. Silence is what is heard by those that cannot listen. Silence so loud that the voices inside you deafen your mind. However the desert is not silent to those that can still hear. Those that have peace with their inner being. Those whose consciousness and conscience are still sharpened and unsatisfied. They hear. The rhythm of the wind blowing. The songs of the dunes moving as if they had a destiny – only that it is thousands of years away. The cracking of the stones at night. All others need to be convinced by the desert that it is not silent – when the storms rage – air and earth clashing together with a sound louder than the waves rolling onto the shore. So loud that you cannot hear your own screams anymore.

The desert – where you learn that you are just a man standing face to face with a creation you are meant to subdue but you are to afraid to stand up against yourself and your like. Weak boys die in the desert.

With much wind and sand and sun but little water the desert teaches those that are humble enough to be taught but proud enough to stand beyond what they have been. A lesson ingrained in a rare demonstration of beauty. The emergence of order from a world of cruelty, scarcity and chaos. Where sand is moved by wind, sparkled with a dust of water floating through the air from the shores ages away, comforted by the sun, a fragile, easy to hurt mystery is given. A form never expected in the endless seas of sand.

A rose is born.