From Alulim to Zimudar

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that is somehow connected to or is an index. I honestly don’t see how this works, and haven’t tried to emulate the example given. An index is a guide to the meanders of a text, to help the reader find her/his way, and this is what that general idea gave me, a bunch of key words, the kind you might find in an index, to help you find your way through the poem.

From Alulim to Zimudar

I could make a poem with a few glowing words,
Samarkand, cinnabar and oriflamme,
fold them like origami cranes,

let them strut the salt flats of the Euphrates,
Chalcolithic Sumer,
fly white and slender-necked the sinuous Tigris,

from Eridu to Uruk to Umma,
calling in their Akkadian accents
to the Black-Headed Ones.

I could wrap them in silks,
damasked and watered,
in all the cascading colours of Babylon’s gardens,

send them on camel-back to Trebizond
or perhaps to Maracanda,
Alexander’s Samarkand,

where this poem began,
in the glowing embers
of Phoenix fire.