In Myanmar
they mine for jade,
a crack in the dry brown earth,
to find the seam of gleaming
green stone.
The rubble dumped
in ravines where scavengers
scrabble across
the shifting fickle fields
to find what was missed.
She kneels under her straw hat
amid the rock
with bowl and pick
breaking open each little piece.
I hope to find the gem of my dreams,
she says.
Her daughter kneels likewise:
I wish my mother would stop, she says,
before the rubble takes her.
Her eyes say, “I wish
I was that gem.”
Her young hands strike open
another
rock—
nothing inside, again.
________
Patricia Thrushart’s poetry appears regularly in The Watershed Journal, North/South Appalachia, and has been published in Tiny Seed, The Avocet, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Feminine Collective, Curating Alexandria. In 2019, she won first place in the NFSPS Diamond T contest.
Image of a Myanmar jade mine by Hosana Chay.
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