‘Dense clouds that push and loom
Too early, darkening the day.
Above the streaming palms
Bent low to earth
Sharp points of blowing sand converge
Are posed beneath the sky’s light blue
In balanced conformation.
Below this flowering, remote, serene
Behold the movement luminous –
A rainbow in the dust.’

‘Sand Storm’ (1932), a poem by American modernist artist Agnes Pelton written to accompany this painting of the same name and year that she created after moving from the US East Coast to the desert of California.