that year under a
spell, certainly the bud helped
green, Humboldt, kind
yet so alien to the computer it seems
impossible to grasp when sitting in front--
even nestled under blankets,
listening to perhaps the best vintage Dead,
even then the spell only comes in pulses,
memories of sun dappled Santa Cruz hillsides,
turning gold in the autumn evening light,
the Monterey Bay spread deep blue like a
sumptuous drink, the knobby peninsula
of Carmel afloat, some Treasure Island
to be reached at night, in rowboats,
silently, blades between the teeth--
yes, this id the place of daydreams, every
moment somehow a flicker of original
indolent Californian ways, lolling in the sun
or fishing trout, collecting berries and shellfish
in the salt marshes, shell mounds still exist twixt
the artichoke fields seconds from the coast,
and the mountain bikes pad over the black
rich soil of infinite, tiny Indian carvings and scrapings,
now artichoke mulch--
Women, how did I let them all slip through
I whose thoughts, perhaps more enlightened than now,
and certainly more relaxed, could not grasp
the thing I most wanted for fear, fear of shaking
and wanting, and losing
desire fairly burned a hole in my soul that year.
