Fickle Sand

Near Mazatlan, white salt
rides the wave swell like cream.
Eclogues in the dusty sheep,
barefoot children 
huddled in tortilla tents.  
Their gunny sacks too thin for flour.
The moon digs with the bowl 
of its spoon, a flashlight
in skeleton rib.  All that is left
of a home is the dust.
"She's just a sneaky leprechaun,
this girl of yours."
The ripe woman knows
conches of lost cutis, pearl --
yawning for grit of the same.

Her cheeks, a seamed mosaic plate,
cigarette between thin cracks
waving off the untoward gods.
Hair of oily demitasse
in heaving braids down curving spine.
"I won't lie," she says.
"This clay you shape is fickle sand.
Held by wish and little else."
Her breasts giggle at truth,
delivered like eggs of tender cache.
"I am turtle-hard old.
Acquainted with slick lust,
the blackened flower."
Wrinkled palms for water jugs,
she strains her knuckles into leaves,
hands his thirst a filtered tear.


© Janet I. Buck

*First Published in Facets, Vol.2 No.1, 2001

---