Lot’s Pillar

This was to be her lot in life:
Gazing over boundless desert,
a sentinel of salt, punished,
motionless, arid as the wind,
still looking homeward,
but no angel.

And does she stand there still?
headless now, so we can no longer
see the longing, the dismay
in her granulated countenance.
What mother, what being,
should be deprived of one
last glance of home?

Frozen in the radiating heat,
she she sits guard like the Sphinx,
forever looking back, eyeless,
heartless, a crumbling memorial
to the sacred bond of home.