by Nancy Dickeman

Driving past security
my father cocked his hat at the guard
who waved him on. The badge
on my father's chest worn
not to name authority but
to measure exposure, the point
at which his daily risk might
catch him up. When he drove the hills
towards home the desert turned
under him, sage and sand
ground to dust, rocks
overtaken by a violet glow.

All the while minerals
touched us, particulates
combing the air and marking us
invisibly changed. In the dust storm
the desert stuck to me like silt, a line

drawn around my mouth and nose.
His back to me, his face
pressed into the receiver
my father said the guards had orders
to shoot to kill. What they held behind them
was a question

of life and death,
the rods delicately working
at the purist's calculations and the tower
casting itself clean
across the river: ore
reduced to powder, a golden substance
diffusible as breath.