In the shade, the ravishing late spring flowers,
tier upon tier of Chinese purple houses,
interwoven with pink fairy lanterns, crowned
by umbels of evenly spaced Ithuriel's spears.
Where the embankment slopes steeply,
I climbed onto a rock by the rushing water.
I felt dizzy, leaning into poison oak. People
had ground acorns in a stone
near the confluence of those creeks.
I had never been there before, but I somehow knew
a path would lead me to another rock with mortars
above me on the ridge. I found the path
a few feet away below the branches
of a huge oak. I don’t know if
we can return to places and people we love,
but on that one path I was part
of tapestries forever changing,
the threads eternal, not bound by time.
A kaleidoscopic blue and pink
and purple, the penstemon flower
with the other village site,
and I lost myself in the shade
near the pounding stone.
