Barbara Blatner

Published by Baker's Plays, 1991.
Produced for radio by Public Media Foundation/New Voices, 1992.
Broadcast on Christmas night, National Public Radio stations, 1992, 1993.
Acquired by the Museum of TV and Radio, New York, NY, 1996.

MARY:
Flowers ripen at my window
in these mornings of long skies,
evenings fold with the sun,
and somewhere in the distance
the ocean sways its amber hem
toward me and away.
Over the desert, footprints mark
the sand and recede,
deleted by rain and wind.
Travelers appear and recede,
then the wind straightens the sand
and I see nothing for miles.
Everything indelible here,
everything written,
is unwritten,
as night breaches on the land
with its dark waters,
as everything changes
and remains the same around me.
Only I do not change,
I am the steady ember in these flares
of burning and remaking
desert and air.