A Hot Dry Climate
Oct 15 2016


In the arid sands
of the Holy Land.
In the southwest desert, or sub-Saharan sahel
live dark-skinned people
hardened by sun.
Their small rectangular homes
are jumbled like children’s blocks
on the lay of the land.
Sand-coloured walls
choke narrow roads,
a patina of dust
that seems centuries old.
Cowed dogs, all skin-and-bone
slink in the shadows.

In a hot dry climate
the roofs are flat.
Where people seek relief, after dark,
grateful, in the stifling heat
for any hint of breeze.
Where they lie on their backs
and look up at the stars
feeling small.

Exposed, in communal sleep.
While we huddle against the cold
beneath sloping roofs, overhanging eaves,
a muffle of snow
to keep the world out.

As if climate were destiny
and we could be nothing but
reserved, taciturn, closed.
Never looking up
at the night sky,
feeling awe-struck
and wonder.

Even high summer, we swelter inside.
As constellations rise, and sink;
the heavens circle
indifferently.

We are products of our environment. So while our northern temperament is private, quiet, and guarded, southerners are more communal:  they live outdoors, in shared spaces; public and private overlap. 

I picture a village of small dun-coloured buildings scattered over an arid landscape. They are all flat-roofed boxes made of clay and crumbling brick. In the heat, people sleep on the roof-tops, gazing up at the stars. So many of us have never seen the night sky. Our lights blind us. We never look up. 

This poem began as I listened to Terry Gross (of NPR’s Fresh Air) interviewing  the author Jonathan Safran Foer about his new novel Here I Am.  He talks about a father and son who, after visiting an observatory in  Marfa, Texas, sit out on the roof looking up at the night sky. Foer quotes (from memory, so it may be a little different in  the actual book) one of them saying:  Why do you think it is people whisper when they look at stars? The question contains truth:  we do speak in hushed reverential tones when we feel wonder and awe. And I like that he apparently ends it there, leaving it more as a rhetorical statement than a  question that needs to be answered, making both the fictional listener and the actual reader complicit in the thought.  The best writers understand the power of this kind of restraint, leaving the reader to elaborate on her own. Anyway, the poem had its start when I heard this and it became somehow conflated with an image I’d seen of this kind of village. 

Not only don’t we have dry heat and flat roofs and an inclination toward communal living; we also don’t have much opportunity in modern life to experience wonder and awe. The key word in the poem is small.  A feeling of smallness and insignificance: this is the common denominator of all experiences that overwhelm us, that shock us out of the boundaries of ego -- from religious transcendence, to the search for meaning through psychedelic drugs.