Beginnings (cont’d)
Out of the poverty of imagination–
out of genocidal wars & war games,
munitions dumps, gold fever & hi-
ho-silver vigilante gunslinging, cattle
gangbanging, land thieving, lead mining,
copper mining, uranium mining,
coal stripping, the damming of any
free-flowing stream or river, the looting
of graves, the paving-over of sacred sites
that lacked only walls to include them
beyond doubt among the world’s great
edifices of the spirit–
out of the all-American roadside
huckstering of the dream itself
comes this literal,
this dust-bedeviled desert.
Lucifer on his peak is mute with wonder.
* * * *
__________
“Beginnings” consists of four parts. This concludes the first.
dust-bedeviled: A widespread Native belief holds that dust devils or whirlwinds are sorcerers in disguise.
Lucifer on his peak: Matthew 4:8, Luke 4:5.
