blaming Michelangelo for my fascination with art, religion, and naked men
City leaves, keep their color
long into Novembers,
chartreuse and saffron hues
still aflutter on the avenues
while country cousins
dour and rust back home.
City leaves hold on
into their Decembers,
clinging to brittle leases
on reaches intended
for short-term stays
well after they’ve
crinkled brown
trying not to
snap
and
fall.
With art school, parish duties, and New York at my doorstep, I barely had time to be homesick for California, that first autumn in 1989. But I was. I missed Berkeley’s temperate climate and dramatic landscape, the way nature entered everyday life, how people treated one another, the forward-thinking politics, and my friends. Oh, my friends. And the deep, clear blue West Coast sky that saturated Berkeley’s daylight, the shadows, and my mood most of the year.
Having in the past only visited New York during its damp springs and hazy summers, I had no idea that crystal blue skies were a trademark of New York autumns. Continue reading “love songs to blue skies”
seeing god naked 