tumbles from one foot.

they are dousing

a girl in a bikini down the beach

first with cold seawater

then with wine.

double-leg   single-leg       stork stalk turn

on the end-square—       hop, fork, hop, scoop the lagger,

we have all trippt and fallen.

surf rough and full of kelp,

all the ages—

draw a line on another stretch of sand—

and—

everybody try

to do the hop, skip, and jump.

4.X.1964 Muir Beach

AUGUST WAS FOGGY

for Sally

August was foggy,

September dry.

October grew too hot.

Napa and Sonoma grasslands,

brushlands,

burned.

In November

then,

We all set back the clock,

and suddenly it rained.

The first green shoots of grass.

you

like some slender

fresh young plant

turn smooth and cool across me

in the night.

touch, and taste, and interlace

deep in the ground.

new rain.

as we begin our life.

BENEATH MY HAND AND EYE THE DISTANT HILLS, YOUR BODY

What my hand follows on your body

Is the line. A stream of love

of heat, of light,       what my

eye       lascivious

licks

over, watching

far snow-dappled Uintah mountains

Is that stream.

Of power.       what my

hand curves over, following the line.

“hip” and “groin”

Where “I”

follow by hand and eye

the swimming limit of your body.

As when vision idly dallies on the hills

Loving what it feeds on.

soft cinder cones and craters;

—Drum Hadley in the Pinacate

took ten minutes more to look again—

A leap of power unfurling:

left,       right—right—

My heart beat faster looking

at the snowy Uintah mountains.

As my hand feeds on you

runs down your side and curls beneath your hip.

oil pool; stratum; water—

What “is” within       not known

but feel it

sinking with a breath

pusht ruthless, surely, down.

Beneath this long caress of hand and eye

“we” learn the flower burning,

outward, from “below”.

THE PLUM BLOSSOM POEM

Angel island.

The sailboat slipping barely west,

Floating over coiling

tongues of filling mud.

East face of the Sierra still is

tilting;

Two plums below Buchanan street

on Vallejo

Blow blossom petals

eastward down the walk.

We hold and caress each other

Where a world is yet unborn;

Long slow swells in the Pacific—

the land drifts north.

THROUGH THE SMOKE HOLE

for Don Allen

I

There is another world above this one; or outside of this one; the way to it is thru the smoke of this one, & the hole that smoke goes through. The ladder is the way through the smoke hole; the ladder holds up, some say, the world above; it might have been a tree or pole; I think it is merely a way.

Fire is at the foot of the ladder. The fire is in the center. The walls are round. There is also another world below or inside this one. The way there is down thru smoke. It is not necessary to think of a series.