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Desert Parable
Jen Stewart Fueston (bio)

A dragonfly kites to the corner of the room,
its body a silver pin, tissue wings a desert’s vellum,
a parchment scribed with the short story of rain.

High desert’s named by what there is not
there, a stucco emptiness, mapped
by bare arroyo, arid canyon.

A nothing filled with sage and piñon,
yucca, shaggy olive, succulent, by crows
aloft on updrafts, tattooing themselves on clouds.

Brief rain arrives to succor brittle bark,
demands, do much with little,
as one leaf does little with its gathered light.

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