Three


      3 White

      Mojave sunset
      I study the persimmon sand

      a tiny jawbone
      a downy plume the length of my thumb.

      because I mainline everything
      I hunt more

      there is no quartz flake
      no elegant plastic shard

              but when I look up
              the moon is a sliver of lace agate.



      3 Cinnabar

      mercurial

      apricot to molten above the western mountains

      footprints (mine)

      what burns imperfectly

              all of that
              there is no need for more

      
3 What is Left Behind

And still I find more in the desert in which some believe there is Nothing:
the words My Mission printed carefully in pencil at the top of a sheet of notebook paper;

a poem in a child's scrawl:

                                "the lepercon

                      It is somthing
                      green.  And it's
                      somthing not
                      mean.  His
                      face is not green.  he
                      is not a
                      king.  He lives
                      In green.

                      It starts with
                      an L and
                      it ends with
                      N"

      And a tattered scrap of a large print bible:

                     " hail
              'Sun stand thou
                      and thou Moon in the vau...
              And the sun stood still, and
                      until the nation took
              their enemies.  Is this not written...'"


Copyright Mary Sojourner 2010