Lama Mountain by Miriam Sagan

at the blue hour
the Egyptologist
inside a perfume bottle
sees the geometries
of space
the night sky
mapped
inside a tomb,
to sit in Paris or London
at dusk
and puzzle
over hieroglyphs
when others
drink
something intoxicating
from a glass
among the bustle
of a great city—
the homeless man
wrapped in layers
like a corpse
turned mummy of a king
lies on the curb
you pass by—
no one
even the Pharoh’s
astronomers
really wants to see
the future—
in the photograph
the nude has turned
cobalt
like a cure
for something—
even if you
scree
into a pool of water
you might not see
Giza,

just Lama Mountain.

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Miriam Sagan is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon, 2016). She founded and heads the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. Her blog Miriam’s Well (http://miriamswell.wordpress.com) has a thousand daily readers. She has been a writer in residence in two national parks, at Yaddo, MacDowell, Colorado Art Ranch, Andrew’s Experimental Forest, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Iceland’s Gullkistan Residency for creative people, and another dozen or so remote and unique places. Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and A Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa.

Photo credit: Terri Malone