The Vision

It started as a headache. Thursday's game ran late.

By Sunday it was a miracle.

I told Father Albert I saw the Virgin Mary in the hay. Third bale from the left. He told the bishop. The bishop told the newspaper.

By Tuesday there were buses.

Two dollars to see the bale. Five to touch it. Twenty to watch me have the vision. Hand to my head, eyes on the road, a little sway. Fifty, and I'd faint.

Three hundred pilgrims a day. Candles, rosaries, tiny bottles of holy hay.

Father Albert took ten percent. The bishop took twenty. The Virgin never asked for a cent.

The bishop asked what she said to me.

I said she said, keep going.

The only real sign out there was the stop sign at the end of the road.

I never paid it much attention.

Photographed, not generated. Salton Sea, 1 May 2016.

Own the memory: a signed limited edition of 50, pigment on aluminum, in three sizes.