I could not sleep in the early awakened dawn with buff-colored birds singing for having survived the night. Sleep evaporated steamy in the bright rise and I ran down the sun headed east, noticing the wild vetch not yet bloomed, everything hoary and wet beneath last night’s deluge.

He’s gone awhile, north hundreds of miles and across the mountains into the wilderness and I wish I could walk with him where he walks. We talked yesterday on the phone longer than we’ve talked on the phone in years, a real conversation about the past few days instead of simple contact involving what’s for dinner. We shared as well as possible the observations and inclinations and pontifications, but after we ended the call I recalled all the things I had wanted to tell him.

All day long I think of things I’d normally mention, simple asides, but when I look for him the house hushes itself, and the dogs cast reproachful glances, and the plants droop their leaves like disappointed anticipation. Even my cat, not given to worry, has come to sit beside me and regard me with those green luminescent crescent eyes. And it has only been five days. I don’t know why it’s so hard this time, except that it’s spring and I miss him.


Yesterday I had breakfast with Shelle and she let me hold her snake, a lovely boa, which she cuddles and coos to like it is a baby. She is so happy lately, a long way from where she was when I met her, when she found herself constricted. We spent the whole morning talking and showing and laughing about dance and motion and serpentine undulations and love, and I thought of the connections there, just on the tip of my tongue, and I felt the tip of my tongue tingling with the thick hot brew she made of jasmine tea.