Another mining company
gouges
this sacred land.
Truckloads of copper ore
stripped
from canyons on the far side
of the Santa Ritas
backhoed
from an open wound
in the mountain.
Ore on its way to be milled
fabricated into
wiring
for electric vehicles
pipes
for houses in suburban sprawls,
bolo ties and bracelets
for winter visitors.
In the small photo I find
among family relics
my mother and my aunt,
just girls, stand beside a giant Buick
their mother off to the side
their father behind the camera
four of them shaded by sycamores,
cottonwoods, mesquites.
It must have been an effort
to pack the car, drive forty miles,
set supplies on a wooden table.
Each summer they staked their claim
in this oasis—Whitehouse Canyon 1923
printed on the edge of a photo
whose worth to me is ten thousand tons
of copper ore.
—
Janet McMillan Rives was born and raised in Connecticut and moved to Tucson as a teenager. After retiring as professor of economics from the University of Northern Iowa, she returned to Arizona. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Into This Sea of Green: Poems from the Prairie, Washed by a Summer Rain: Poems from the Desert and On Horsebarn Hill: Poems as well as the hybrid collection, Thread: A Memoir in Woven Poems.
