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Hot Springs Cinquains
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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hot SPringS CinquainS If, when the young man rode up on a pack horse with cameras we had not just plunged into the hot pool then toweled dry, gotten mountain chill out of our bodies (two long-haired waifs in Big Sur eating seaweed from a cup), we might have agreed to undress dive neck-deep into the hot pool again at dusk so we could be snapped for National Geographic; we were not shy in our bodies not even suspicious of his invitation to be in a photo spread on hot springs in the Northwest (who would cook up such a story?). If we weren’t so insouciant in love with our new sense of female solitudeday’s great climb, full packs and cramps up Ventana Wilderness mountainside sleeping out tentless we could hear ghosts in the wind of the vanished Indianswe might have agreed. As it was we shook our damp heads and lost the chance to be two sleek seals in mountain steam. Months later in a dentist’s waitingroom I found the issue: saw our hot springsghost of our two headson the page. Twenty years hence finds me conjuring up this picture for you of our happy refusal to plunge back in. ...