blackbird online journal spring 2002 vol.1 no. 1

POETRY

DAVID ST. JOHN

Zuni Ring

Bought a dozen years ago
Hammered silver & set with the stone that baffles
All admirers—sugalite—as dusty as a dark plum
Hung too long on the branch above

The wind-whipped fields a purple just
This side of a bruise its minute rectangular pieces
Inlaid as precisely as a Ravenna mosaic

This devotional band of silver monochrome

I've worn since we walked the yellow lanes of
The pueblo looking for some fetishes of silence
Some relics of adornment we might
Weld to us in the hope that whatever we carried away
Would echo through our bodies like this lightning

Stitching the gathering night  


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