Tenderloin scruples
dust our tenacious otter friends
all the way through the tendrils of paradise,
slipping under starved mineral formations
long enough to glimpse the hooey
etched on their facets
by a possessed quartz fragment.
Five for a dollar in this flea market,
shards of landscaping quartz
may not be used for the backyard
(at least according to the stand owner,
who had a fateful brush with the spirits
while trespassing on a millionaire’s garden property
and now prefers to leave out the horrid details).
WHARVED 