—for Lee Perron
Evening patiently threads wings of orange and vermilion, weaving an opalescent shroud of water and sky; a back-drop for the solstice moon. Venus on the horizon, the indigo sky—a vast dome fitted over the earth, stitched with stars. Headed for the monastery, a woman with a wooden kneeler boards the bus. You told me all the women of the northwest have bovine eyes and blonde hair. I wear silk flowers in my fiery dark hair, but I might as well be her. Shasta waits white, silent. Yesterday was so torrid, I swam my way across California—from the Sierra foothills and the Yuba River of morning, the coastal ranges of Lake Berryessa of afternoon, and the nameless creeks hidden in the gullies of evening. As you meditated on shore, you glistening with sweat; your eyes drinking my cool nakedness with a desert-honed thirst. At dusk, the Pope Valley spread before us, a vast wooded bowl brimming with the last frontier of cattle. Soon it will succumb to the sacrament of vineyards, like all the rest. The stars lazily drifted across the sky as we toyed with constellations; I understood the desire of the lover, but not of the coupling of desire, with the overcoming of desire. I was a novice; my avocation, not yet realized. You carry it with you always, this deep love of emptiness until there is nothing left to do but kneel like a lover before the open body of the land until the rains come.
6/21/1981
rev 8/81
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