Star Dust

In a small history of the Great Plains

a band of Indians plunder a keelboat

stowing fortunes of gold dust

in buckskin sacks. Once the cargo

is theirs, they keep the durable,

the leather-for packing chokecherries

and buffalo-let the gold

mix with the sand, the element gimcrack,

star dust to the Sioux.

And pausing in my reading

I juxtapose romance

against these work-mastered days,

love's ticking metal, the sparkle-

mask of unworkable love, neither steady

nor enduring. Gleaming, luring.