Blue-plate specials
form the sky. The ranch is high
desert--a mile up or more, for the hazy hor-
izon's pale, but zenith's azure sky:
near-alpine air. Austere.

Jenny-Barbara's here
in lobby with a survey. Pens. "Help steer
my next project." Deep questions; answers sting.
But she ignores truths begged-for--demands a large
registration fee! I'm mad. She never said. Solicited
a soul-search just for cash? I feel marketed:
made merch.

And yet her last quest
mattered. She lived three years in a ghost
town. Gnawed-out tortoise-shells of homes,
hollow store-skulls at a desert junction.
Orphans settled there

like loess. Dysfunction.
Half the town drugged. Two murders. Then
the slow fact that an Artist--capital--documented all,
scribing outcast dreams patiently, indelibly,
saw them through sere to green:
community.

Struggle. Get clean.
Make a house a home. Start a co-op store.
By the time she left town, it was one. Poor
but living. Green

I think from being
seen. Art's power: see the seen
as worth being seen.