To Salt Lake, Letter Regarding Genealogy

after Charles Olson

No shore no shore backed against a paradox of water where snow
halts in valleys & we drink
what melts, I, risen from one break in the endless
salt flat. I have had to build. O! how I have built for you!
See how I have come, Salt Lake, with my thousand faces of the void!
My face night with no stars, my face waves
in night sea. I was born to work.
My mother, crow-headed goddess, called me dust & trusted
I’d become. I changed for you! I became
a quarry in Big Cottonwood. Later, I was born
in uniform & carried a pickax in my throat.
I stole the mountain’s sandstone & it wasn’t good enough
so I took its quartz instead & told you “pray by it”. I,
Guard-thing of the White city. How would you pray without me!
I was born with a sore head from a perm & swaddled in pages
from The Good Book. I was a decoy.
I pretended not to know my many names.
I did the work of believing with you.
I was born on swamp property the woman who bore me was an animal.
We were both animals, then.
I covered your wagon w canvas & I found you