Apple cored rectangular, knife cut, motionless on the desert earth, stem protruding from an indentation in the golden crown like the lone hair of a cowlick pointing, at last, in the proper direction. White meat of fruit oxidizes in swollen heat.

I pitched the litter aware that the infraction, violation, might attract unwanted animals to conical cluster of kuti huts—coyote, coatimundi, vulture, and ant—undermining the sanguine soteriological intent of the sangha.

The taste of the apple still tart at tip of tongue, over a barbed wire fence I tossed the trash, pome arcing over words painted in highway yellow across rectangular metal sign: NO TRESPASSING.

No return.

Plying black through misty-clouded blue, the raven, I pray, might spy the morsel and descend from on high to grant me, sinner, absolution; sacred trust of the Zen Master re-hinged by a bird carrying off the offering, apple flesh not burnt but burning in reckoning light.

Bones crepitating to stroke of wing, raven circles, cackles caw call, is swallowed by sky. A whirl of wind spins dust, winds earth toward heavens. Bright heat tunnels through the top of my skull to blear mind of matter.

I look here then there; they are not two—dehydrated desert dotted by mesquite and jumping cholla—and the apple has abruptly absconded, like a fleck of dust dissolved in a tear-blurred eye, digested by that which birthed it.