Who doesn’t know the brevity of a sparkling thing?
The dustmotes at the window turn stained-glass cracklings
and we breathe them, unfiltered. No apologies.
Who has time to put the post-apocalyptical spin on fleeting prettiness?

Tattoo the Brazilian runway girls with their BMIs,
deny the sylphs access to the dream.
A woman is a thirsty opal glaring from an igneous fist,
an uncut stone, a fallow shard of sea-glass accidental lightning-skip,
a novelty.

The stubby cacti growing misplaced on Petit Jean Mountain are women.
There are warning signs:
Don’t pick native wildflowers.
Wear hard shoes against their low, unexpected prickle.

The mountain is a little woman and the story of a dying woman,
and a ledge women throw their hearts from.
Sometimes the rest follows.
Sometimes in the morning papers there are
stories of wildflower women illegally picked and
left like breadcrumbs on the Seven Hollows Trail for sleepy bears.

Don’t get lost.