We write to each other as if 
we were using the same language, 
though we are not. Your sentences lap 
over each other like the waves 
of the Pacific, strictureless; 
your long, sleek-voweled words 
fill my mouth like ripe avocados.
To read you is to dismiss 
news of earthquakes and mud-slides, 
to imagine time in slow motion.
It is to think of the sun 
as a creature that will not let anything 
happen to you.
                        Back here
We grow leeks and beans and sturdy 
roots that will keep for months.
We have few disasters; i.e.,
no grandeur to speak of. Instead 
we engage in a low-keyed continuous struggle 
to get through the winter, which swallows 
two seasons and throws it shadow 
over a third. How do you manage 
without snow to tell you that you are mortal?
We are brought up short by a wind 
that shapes our words; they fall 
in clean, blunt strokes. The birds here 
are mostly chickadees 
and juncos, monochromes 
bred to the long view 
like the sky under siege of lead 
and the bony trees, which hold  
the dancers first position 
month after month. But we have 
our intimations: now and then 
a cardinal with it's lyric call, 
it's body blazing like a saint’s 
unexpectedly gaudy heart, 
spills on our reasonable scene 
of brown and grey, unconscious of itself.
I search the language for a word 
to tell you how red is red.