It was a silver town in her day ~
desert, with mountains
around a shallow lake.
She arrived at the wrong time
and stayed too long, unable
to break the spell ~
falling in love first
with a shiftless miner and his dreams,
then with the smell of sage
in her nostrils after rain.
So she stayed on, and the town
changed, year by year:
aqueduct from L.A., exposed
root of the distant city
showing black here and there
along the foothills, funneling water
and lives away ~
silver mines
replaced by a plant extracting sulfur
from the dry lake.
To those who visit (and oftener
to the gray burro
tethered patient by a railroad tie)
she has formed a habit
of muttering ~
that bent pillar,
stalagmite on the lake, reminds her
of Lot's wife.
Urged to join a community
with comforts for the old (a church,
a hospital) she declines,
keeps her religion
where at night across the purple and
white lake and across dunes
journey two kit foxes,
male and female acolytes, to drink
at her yard pail.
She closes her Bible (that told of life
and death and afterlife) to watch
the foxes shyly going,
printing a double trail on sand
and crusted lake,
coats wet with moonlight.
She knows that black fox shadows
precede them into night,
and their eyes are silver coin.
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