I've been reading Jan Richardson's Night Visions, which, by the way, is out of print and you can only get copies for $75-$100. Anyway, week two is about desire with a reflection on landscape and place. I wrote about the landscape most spiritual to me:
I long for high desert
dryness, heat-hot sweating
raw heat, draining me
of all my impurities:
1) This virus that clings
to my lungs ~
sweat it out;
2)This addiction to whisky:
watch me, three days in the desert
I could sweat it out;
3) This longing
for earthly love ~
I have only to look up
at vast blue beyond blue
to know my desires
are small in contrast
to possibilities.
Sweat them all out.
In the desert
I have no need
for anything ~
not even food
as my stomach shrinks
into lightness.
Not even water
as I push myself
through hallucinations
of dehydration
and am pleased
with what I see ~
Simplicity.
Light, warmth,
melt down
to the skeleton of me.
Bones whitened
in a blazing sun ~
the color of purity,
the absence of all color
is me in this high
desert light.
