Ten Thousand to One

The Phoenicians guarded a recipe that required ten thousand murex shells to make an ounce of Tyrian purple. Scan the surface of Aldebaran with a radio wave; grind lapis lazuli into ultramarine. Search the summer sky for an Anasazi turkey constellation; see algae under an electron microscope resemble a Magellanic Cloud. A chemist tried to convert benzene into quinine, but blundered into a violet aniline dye instead. Have you ever seen maggots feed on a dead rat? Listen to a red-tailed hawk glide over the hushed spruce and pines in a canyon. Feel a drop of water roll down a pine needle, and glisten, hanging, at the tip.