Divagations (2) A Field on Mars

Hunted from their places, fierce & hungry hordes &
nomads plunge into our streets.
The word is desiccation, somewhere that was fertile
once, & now, battered by a hostile wind, becomes a field on
Mars, a world more lonely than the world allows.
Behold the grandmother, her skin a dirty grey as if
the light were of a foreign color, absent, hidden from the hole
in which she dwells.
These are no children’s games—or are they?
Cards slapped on a table, thrown against a wall, brought
as a pack down on the willing skin.
Saints alive!
The call to battle rattles the savage mind, a premise from
the present yet no less exotic.
Granted: that their funds are toxic comes as no surprise;
that the lack of means betokens a further struggle; that nations
once deprived rise in their millions.
It is a thought on which to dwell, shaken* from sleep.