\nDuring the fat years of Cripple Creek, the
\nveins of turquoise lay at angles to the seams
\nof sylvanite and gold, and they say that
\nwhen the ore was crushed and cyanidated,
\nturquoise and the other worthless rocks
\nwere ground into tailings in the stamp
\nmills, later used as gravel to pave the muddy
\nstreets. Today, small and jagged pieces of
\nblue after hard rains still surface in the
\nalleys, washed and alloyed, stonefruit.
\n
\nThat wet morning behind the Elks, by the
\npallets and the bone weeds, I found it
\nand rolled it between my thumb and finger
\nas I would hold a nipple, a small ball, a
\ncaterpillar, and I placed it in my mouth, to
\ntaste it for breath, for solidity, to conjure
\nthe undisturbed earth, and it worked–my
\nsenses stream like neutrinos through the
\ncore, the clear puddle where I stood, a
\nphilter, a caldera.
\n
\n
\n
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\nReuben Ellis is professor and chair of the Writing Department at Woodbury University in Los Angeles. His publications include Vertical Margins: Mountaineering and the Landscapes of Neo-Imperialism; Stories and Stone: Writing the Ancestral Pueblo Homeland<\/em>; and Beyond Borders: The Selected Essays of Mary Austin<\/em>, as well as many published essays, short stories, and poems. He is currently\u00a0working on a book-length project\u00a0describing\u00a0literary representations of ancestral Puebloan peoples and sites.
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\nRobin Ouzman Hislop<\/strong> is Editor of Poetry Life and Times<\/a> his publications include All the Babble of the Souk<\/em> <\/a>and Cartoon Molecules<\/em> <\/em><\/a>collected poems and Key of Mist<\/em> <\/em><\/a>the recently published Tesserae<\/em> <\/em><\/a>translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande <\/a>and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com\/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a>about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University)<\/a> .<\/p>\n