I ask you if it’s time to leave
our tiny place in California
and travel up the coast
But it’s no good.
You only stare at the rolling hills
Veiled with morning fog like eager brides,
the stoic sage who tells me
which way to face when the wind
blows through our valley.
I am your mess now
your delicate mess
fragile enough to break
Into five hundred and sixty
Blue butterflies every time you leave me.
It comes from a lonely dawn
An altar to the priestly sun
And from a small Mexican boy’s trumpet
as he plays for the sea a dirge.