Rain lashes across and lightning forks down. The kitten gazes wide eyed out at the storm. The robot forms a canopy over the kitten’s head with its hands and smiles wide as the storm drums on its weathered metal.



Prayer to the Sands



In the waste of the world the still one hulked,

Dun hued and pitted with rust.

A grey gaze sifted the sun stained rock,

slid over the grizzled scrub.

A prayer to the sands keened slow from its mind,

the sigh of a dying thing.

Let the light fall now from my too charred frame,

come cover me now with your warmth.

May the din and the scorch of the earth

fade away, as my iron returns to the dust.

Who can say if the soft sands heard,

if the wind was mindful at all?

But as the world wound to the cusp of dusk,

the still one lifted its head -

a mewling escaped from the age dead weeds,

a cry from the shade locked stone.

And in the last shafts of a dirt drab day

a shape coalesced from the dark.

Crusted fur and wide round eyes

deep with doubt and need.

For just a moment neither moved,

as hues slid off to drown…

Then padding fear-bold through the dim

the creature shifted close,

nosed tentatively at the bulk

and slipped inside a gap.

The still one sensed the life warm form

curled soft inside its plate,

and prayed once more to the sliding sands

to rule over its fate.

Let the light rise gold on our flesh and steel,

be kind to us now on our way.

May the din and the scorch of the earth

fade away, as we take our first steps toward home.



