by Laura Booth
The soul has no need for a Cybertruck,
although the soul needs love, and
to move, freely, on Boisduval’s blue wings,
from shadow to sun in a shimmering line,
from lupine to lupine, and to drink wine sometimes
in a field, exclaiming at night’s volley of a star.
The soul does not need a dollar,
although it does need to eat
a popsicle on the sand dollar–strewn
beach of childhood to know what wealth is.
The body requires a story to carry itself
forwards across the dimming valley, foaming chasm
where the fear of deprivation roars in a ceaseless din,
like the traffic we find ourselves constantly mired in,
trafficking comfort for violence,
trading the safety of someone we cannot see
in Palestine, the Tenderloin, the mountain lion
whose prowling looms large in our dreams,
but whose ranging is red-lined, guillotined by the freeway.
The earth did not invent the internet,
although connection is the rule by which animation breathes.
We don’t need Starlink to see each other;
to see each other is why we read.
Laura Booth is a biologist working in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and a student in USF’s Master of Science in Environmental Management program. She hosts an open mic at Black Bird Bookstore in the Outer Sunset. Her work has appeared in the West Marin Review and Emocean magazine.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 