Silver Coin
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 shuts 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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© 1977 by Beth Stevens
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