For Us Toiling Away

Painting by Salvador Dali


For Us Toiling Away
Probably Not to Become Rich and Famous


Then there's times
in our deeply digging
submerged so far that
the domes of our heads arise
from our self proclaimed tunnels
only enough to furrow the earth's surface
like Bugs Bunny
we take a wrong turn at Tucumcari

The rivers of ourselves
not to connect up with bigger rivers
or form deltas or gulfs or well known tides
once we gain the boundless ocean

But manifest as something closer
to the Mighty Okavango
flowing off into the Namib Desert
finally engulfed by surrounding sands

Where just before fading into that wasteland
a jungle oasis crops up
supportive of hippopotami, rhinoceros, babboons,
crocodiles, fish in the middle of the desert
the only elephants for a thousand miles

W. Joe Hoppe

Posted over on Gumball Poetry