i spent the last few days down at the farm, having grown quickly weary of the big city superficial splendor. yesterday I went through a box of old 'zines, including the first one i published, back in '96. I included a poem that i found painted on a rock at the Sutro Bath ruins on the Pacific coast in San Francisco many years ago, when I was just a snot-nosed little city girl with a big ego, and this seems like as good a place as any to revive these still resonant words:

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

It may be helpful to remember
that things have not always been as they are

This may be, obvious as it sounds,
easy to forget while walking concrete paths
and perceiving streams of traffic
and rectangular shelters

It may be helpful to keep in mind
that at one time these constructions
were non-existent
as you were

It may be of some use to look over
all that you see right now,
the expanse and boundaries of our environment,
and think how all of this will be gone one day
eaten,
and reapplied

It may be helpful to see beauty
in decomposition;
because like the leaves of trees turn birght
and fall to the ground to replenish their mother,
it is also our inescapable priviledge
to rot

So it now becomes necessary
to view all items in the world
as reflections,
all objects as mirrors,
and then move upon this basis.

the rain smells of love
musky like that, like woman
like fresh bread at dawn