Crater of Diamonds

Kort tells me a story
of arriving at unending fields
of overturned earth,

after hours of driving
an outing organized
by his grandparents

to pan for diamonds
we choose a day
after rain when the topsoil

has washed away, imagine
stones will sit out
winking on the surface

ours for the taking
“finders keepers”

signs mark the day
the crust was last plowed,
number of diamonds found

this month: seven
excavated yesterday: just one
when we empty

the contents of our dig
onto the ranger’s carrel
she points out quartz

then singles out
the citrine; crystalline
structures altered

by compression &
high temps, I finger chert –
rock flaked off to form the flint

you used to build blazes
in your boyhood accounts
touching the warmth

of metamorphic
matter hollowed out
of the body’s beryllium

we come back to mine