Woven into her soft
fibers, the red dust
powders strawberry
roan in color,

she slips off to a
creek by willow
and cottonwood
where they courted
each other, watching
the white moon rise to
cleanse the kachinas.

She remembers the
way it smells under
that woman's tattered
shawl when they f***ed
their way through the
juniper-pinion forest
passing that bottle of
Ridge Zinfandel.

Climax lifted them in
tiered red cliffs, peaking
at timbered crest with pink
sandstone, absolutely lyrical.

Smell that air?  Bitter tang is
aspen.  The wood of the Cross
must have been made from
aspen, since everafterward the
leaves have quaked.

She speaks with feeling, clear
that her affections are wrapped
up in this place.  She is living
folkore, survivor of the frontier,
quintessential statement of life,
life-size and painted in ocher on
a clean pink cliff.

Actually, a pleasant experience,
she lost her virginity here many
years ago to a woman on a seismo
crew drilling holes beside the road.

From a lofty standpoint, she sees
it from afar, the threshold of
another world, drawing nearer
and nearer to it.

What nostalgia remembers may
not always be here.  Here, she
is one with Creation where women
and land get on well together.  She
acknowledges what revives her
memory.

Longing, wonder, and mystery
become a lure and a destination.

Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties, flagship of Stone Creek Woman