See You in the Dark: Poems

Ecstasy

74 ECSTASY Ecstasy, initially, did not agree with me. A stupefying pill— I’ll sleep it off, I moaned. But you said walk, walk the stupor and the faintness off, wrapped me in a windbreaker to walk into the wind on the hills of Bolinas, below us the roiling ocean, above, the wind slashing our faces. My blood surged up again, its pressure rising in ecstasy. After the low, the high. We talked and laughed all afternoon, afloat in a lukewarm tub, face to face, running the water through our lives, rinsing out our lives, wringing out the past, then built a fire and sat by the fire with food till late. We passed our trip among the elements, air, water, fire. Now you are California earth, far from your place of birth, Sarajevo, where the Germans came in the front door and your family ran out the back. Your first year in California you were crowned prom queen for your beauty, fifty years later gnawed from within. They found you with ants crawling towards you, drawn by the smell. And I, after that wind-whipped day, renounced Ecstasy, out of timidity, because it is risky and unlawful, and shouldn’t the death of a friend like you be equally unlawful? ...