Nearly two billion years ago,
on the caldera
of an undersea volcano,
copper formed
under Cleopatra Hill.
Though it wasn't until,
about 150 years ago,
Man struck Earth’s artery,
and did everything he could
to keep watching her bleed.
I travel up the Black Hills.
A white mountain monogram
rests on the ground
just above the old mining town.
Jerome.
Every winding street,
working against gravity,
brings the roof of each building
to somewhere just below
the base of my feet.
I float through a small park
held up by reenforced concrete,
and see the haunted hotel,
peeking through waving branches.
A willow tree.
Muted ragtime
from a nearby winery,
carried up on a light breeze,
seems sweeter than all the spirits
in the Wicked City.
I wander
the wrong way
down a one way street,
alongside a stone staircase
enveloped in unrelenting ivy.
An aventurine serenity.
Long tendrilled roots
with overlapping stems
stake their claim
over wrought iron railings.
An opening in the stone façade,
eclipsed by tarnished bars.
Though despite Man’s best efforts,
the vines, with infallible grace,
spill down the walls inside.
Cracked stone and corroding trusses
imprison hidden graffiti:
a sullen young woman,
her body chipped with age,
sitting among the leafy stream.
I look to her.
She looks past me.
I turn to see
the world
from her point of view.
One day— I know—
this hillside dream will slip away,
like the sand of an hourglass,
into the jasper tinted valley,
away from the calcite-colored sky.
Though how lucky, to be here now,
to witness a distant haze
as the updraft reaches my face.
Centuries of dust hiss by
this mile high mine.
And I can only be
unbothered to breathe,
perhaps for the first time,
standing in someone else’s home.
Jerome.
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