If you Build it...

The theme to this chapter of our lives in the first year of Dubai is newness.  We live in a new villa and work in a new building on a new campus.  This campus is a great house slowly becoming a home.

This seems to mirror this city that is so new it resembles nothing that I can remember from my visit 13 years ago. In those 13 years, I have lived 4 new chapters.  I have been a suburban homeowner, lived in three states, fathered two daughters and lived through four Scandinavian winters.  All the while, the Ponzi scheme that is Dubai was multiplying.

Dubai rises from the sand into the sky blue.

The constant sun gleams
off the tops
of the buildings,
reflecting
blinding
golden rays
that shatter
the sky and
shadow the sand.




Mosques mingle in the city,
calling to one another
in a timeless minaret
singalong.

Sky scraping needle points jut higher,
mixed with spiraled rotundas,
meshed with twin metal monsters,
cemented dreams with windows
and modern pyramids-
all
sit
along
the
sand.

The creek winds through old town,
an asp dividing the city's port.
The snaking water silently slithers-
a reminder of the boats and goods
flowing into and out of the middle east.

Dubai's port, the Grand Central Station of commerce
for the Gulf,
trapped in the heat between dozens of cultures.

If you build it,
the cranes will come.

The workers will arrive.

The sand will succumb.


The Palm will sprout from water.


Do Buy.





If you build it,
Dubai will rise
from the sand-

reaching towards the heavens.