These kinds of things that I deal with in my stories
are the kinds of things that the people at home enjoy a lot.
And there's just a whole different attitude.
I don't know.
Anyway, and I just can't help it.
I just have to--
I just enjoy it too much myself to stay away from it.
Sort of X-rated, I guess you might say.
OK.
This is what I call more like of a poem rather
than a storytelling thing.
This one's called, "Prayer to the Pacific."
"I travel to the ocean, distant from my southwest
land of sandrock, to the moving blue water,
big as the myth of origin.
Pale, pale water in the yellow, white light of sun,
floating west to China, where ocean herself was born.
Clouds that blow across the sand are wet.
Squat in the wet sand and speak to ocean,
I return to you, turquoise, the red coral you sent us,
sister spirit of Earth.
Four round stones in my pocket, I carry back
the ocean to suck and to taste.
30,000 years ago, Indians came riding across the ocean,
carried by giant sea turtles.
Waves were high that day.
Great sea turtles waded slowly out from the gray sundown sea.
Grandfather Turtle rolled in the sand four times
and disappeared, swimming into the sun.
And so, from that time immemorial,
as the old people say, rain clouds drift from the west,
gift from the ocean.
Green leaves in the wind, wet earth on my feet,
swallowing raindrops clear from China.