These hills want you. The sudden deer

stop as if astonished by your sculptures.

It's March, the first drops of rain.

You put together two or three

shafts of wood, the souls of trees

married to the space around our sleep.

A cowl around your head,

you could be a monk,

growing more vertical and hewn

until one day, by storm-light,

you will have become your work.

Here we moo back to the cows,

there's spring-moist grass,

trilliums by the stream and redwood sorrel;

nights so dark one can see a star

a million light years away.

I enter waterfalls of ferns,

the corollas of unknown

wildflowers. Below,

the ocean’s pale sunset gold.

A ship seems to hang in the clouds,

then disappears into a fogbank.

Your sculptures, Bjorn:

the flight of hawks,

gray eyes of lichen on rocks,

ruined cities of moss;

redwoods sailing the fog

like resurrected Viking ships –

The flow of wood

guides your hand,

the red-stained grain

so silent I begin

to imagine its sound,

a primeval syllable

older than the first word –

In my childhood I learned

the opposite of art is dictatorship,

the generals saluting

from a flag-draped platform.

Art, the shock of a shape that insists

something within the rim of our breath

knows more than we do.

Here’s to this

unsayable language –

to the hills, to the ocean,

to the ship in the clouds;

to the artists defeating

generals; to silence.

I see her and move

a few steps to the right.

She slyly looks at me

with her sideways glance.

I slowly circle her; her eyes

with slight amusement

follow me around.

Those eyes are more than

immortal –

those painted eyes are alive.

Master, what made you know

how to change paint into soul?

“Observe the craft,” he replies.

“Layers of glaze so thin

they glow with a tender light.

Note the fabric of the sleeve,

how soft – see – this is love – ”

And he flows back into her

coronal of imaginary

Alps, pure archaic peaks,

a hushed congregation –

Behind her, a coiling path;

and barely, barely, a veil.

between her and the light.

He is silent now, while she

looks on forever, in subtlest

of sfumato hues.

Some say the secret is

that she is pregnant.

That we need that hidden

other life. An unknown

self whose heartbeat

we can sense inside.

Note the crescent

arches of the bridge. Observe

smoky tendrils of golden-green sky.