they’re too busy squinting and watching

overhead like a woman watches her periphery

in a parking lot, random Tuesday grocery run

keys tight in cold knuckles. It happened here

before, they think, just like this, and nobody’s

looking for an encounter they’ll never shake.

Eyes pressed against the sun, almost too radiant as

it is, and the sand –oh the sand– if you could only

focus the light the heat the color the God

all this sand would turn to an inferno of glass,

molten and then static, fragile with its fire

gone, and that would be you too, just like Saul,

but transformation’s just not in the cards tonight.

Safer to be a hundred thousand tiny specks

than a lens.