It wasn’t enough that we had flown
twelve hundred miles and driven three hundred more—
(the Grand Canyon beckoning another set of tourists)
the pennies my parents handed me to shop with
weren’t enough
(and not because I needed those things)

row after row of turquoise and silver
birds carved out of bone
earrings that dangled or
popped perfectly in the hole
tiny tables shaded from the desert sun
the dust gathering at their feet
like milkweed clinging to the skin
their eyes almond dark
weathered as much as the hands
that wove thick cotton blankets
too heavy to wear here
necklaces that reflected
the perfect polished moments of the morning,
silver that couldn’t be tarnished
with anything less than
the strength of the hands that worked it.

those hands, those faces, were what
my nine-year-old heart ached to buy,
not the sapphire sparkle of turquoise,
but the poverty that seeped
through their thin cotton dresses and trousers,
the braids that hung down their back, frizz-less,
the forced smiles that begged, begged to sell;
but we were poor too (riding in my grandpa’s
ancient station wagon, two years of careful
saving to buy the plane tickets, clothes cousinly
hand-me-downs, camping along the road)
and I knew I could never buy enough
to give them back what so many generations
had already taken away.