Riddles in the Desert

Ice cold water builds pressure
during my descent.
Murk swallows the sun
at a hundred feet --
down twice that far, the bottom
glows green with floodlights.
I step onto the ocean floor,
inside a maze of twisted metal
thrust upward like the ribs
of some huge fallen beast.

Among the wreckage,
a row of crumpled ghosts
sits belted in their seats.
Their skin is paste white
in the headlamp's blaze,
arms frozen on the rests.

Two hundred people relaxed
on a flight to Cairo
when the terror dive commenced.
From here, in the stillness,
I imagine the engines
thundering on steep descent,
the plastic doll
now lying at my feet
beheaded, bouncing into walls.
Screams, flames, as the cabin
shears to splinters.

Now a man with reading glasses
grips a book between his hands.
My beam swings 'cross the page --
"Chapter 10 - Riddle of the Sphinx".
Perhaps he dreamt of Pyramids,
unearthed Pharoahs,
Saharan secrets
asleep beneath the sand.

I wish this mangled skeleton
would rise from death,
two hundred human hearts
bared raw in rows and aisles.
The resurrected beast
might swing its cockpit head
toward me with two cracked
panes for eyes.

Then, from the haunted deep,
whisper answers
to riddles
lying scattered across
and buried beneath 
this cold, dark desert.

Scott Speck
11/02/99