Awake Unto Me

Book excerpt: Running In the Evening I've run until my breath has gone away; the rising winds disturb the forbidding sands; the cacti rustle with the close of day, their blackened forms in all directions stand. My eyes are dazed from the shimmering heat, the lemon-gusts of sage dry out my nose; I look around as evening, like a sheet of darkened blue, to moonless blackness grows. A windless rustle eerily crawls away against horizons always past my sight... I can't be sure now--what has come my way could be the wind--or something from the night-- And as the darkness chills my sun-burned skin, I sense the desert slowly closing in.