SKY BOWL

A friend described the topography
Of our backyard
As a Sky Bowl -
Filled with the often Brilliant 

Light Of Ojai
Flooding a space circumscribed
By a shallow canyon
The austere plane of the house

And beyond
The Topatopa foothills
Then the spalled face
Of the range itself.

There is a clarity to this light
Reflected in a dark lap pool
Or Swallowed by the dense greens
Of gnarled oaks;

But mostly
Promiscuously slathered
So that it rains down from the sky
To fill the Bowl in great Torrents.

This may not be Ladakh
Where, Andrew Harvey writes
’Autumn is coming
I smell it in the air…

Each day
You wake to a different
Colder, purer blue’
But in this Sky Bowl

Where no prayer flags
Flap in the breeze
One can still drown
In Heaven’s foreshadowing.

A Journey in Ladakh, 1983