Jeremy Lockhart Nelson: ‘Camels’

Camels

Camels
wear Astrakhan coats
bleached to light brown.

Their humps
are the summits of mountains
that move.

They wake at first light,
prop themselves up

and start their dry day
rubbing their backs
on rough wooden railings.

Harnessed by keepers
they tread with great softness
the desert-deep silence.

Till sweat overtakes them,
their smell has
the nimbus of farmyards.

Sand dunes
and pebble-strewn plains
dwindle behind them.

Sometimes like dogs
they stop to scratch
with hind legs
the itch of their bellies.

Then moving in file
weight flattens their feet
like slippers pressed down.

At the blast of a sand storm,
the flex of their nostrils
filters the air.

In huge barrel-like bodies
they hold small seas,
water clanked up
from underground oceans.

They thrive in long contact
with the wisdom
of the desert’s wide silence

and find in slow walk
the peace of good will.

With periscope heads
they scan the horizon.

Their long necks return
to the hooked shape
of a…