Bread

Dirt sifts through my fingers

like funnels of fool's gold

how richly it crumbles into dust

how easily I could sculpt it into metaphor

if I did not feel the clutches

of cliché at my throat

I will stand and chant poetic words

that silver the sand

in my miner's pan

* * *

In the hills of the Arizona desert

a Navajo woman floats into focus

her head wrapped in bright colors

her breath cushioned by worn fabrics

her hair hiding the canyons of hope

that spread across her age-cratered face

Brown as loaves of pueblo bread

baking in beehive ovens

she sprinkles salt on the uncooked dough

letting it rise through traces of fire

how many years has she prepared this food

dangling it like a charm for her hungry brood

how many times has she levitated on the wind

trailed by her ancient self a perpetually reborn

gold-footed ghost

Beyond the mesa night creeps skyward

stars sprinkle the folds of her garments

igniting a vision of crackling flames

she handles handfuls of bread

as plump as elephant toes

as domed as the heavens

urging them to power through

her dustings of pride

I follow her under a gibbous moon

skeins of fate and specks of light

wrap around her burgeoning waist

she does not notice me

in my well of silence

like a clear-eyed hawk

she surveys the desert

for signs of sustenance

only one thing will satisfy

her cache of freshly baked bread

buried at the entrance of a cave

decorated with hand prints

steeped in mounds of flour

I have tasted and seen the beauty

of her bounty but I will not sing its praises

I stand outside the circle of belonging

outside the ring of relationship

that tightens each year with another's passing

still I am sated by this smoky miracle

of hope mixing with the bluest dawn

* * *

The sky blesses

my lightly etched sand

it I spy her face as oracle

weaving through adobe abodes

clinging to jagged cliff faces

dancing with a necessity

she cannot bake

into these burnt summer days