In New Mexico, we take all the luck we can get. When it streams along the red dirt road like rainwater, we bend down and scoop it up in our empty to-go cups. Then we duck behind a piñon and pour it over our heads, open our mouths and drink some too, just like a hobo shower. We love the luck and what it does to our waking dreams. How it makes us shine. There are magnets in the water that call our intentions from over the mountains to our hands like trained birds. Everyone, from adobe wall-builder to hermit oil painter, everyone out here trying, loves to hear them sing and stops to listen when at last they sing again. Sometimes the luck showers us from the blue sky like warm summer rain, every now and then. We stay attentive, ready for it.

 

 

Dawn Sperber

from NANO Fiction, #10.1, 2016