Holiday in Ammaia

Last year, I visited a friend with a terminal disease, who used to just drop by when the kids were tiny, just knock at the door the way people did in the 70s, to discuss science fiction writing, and so on. Retreating from the shock, and other stuff, I walked and walked, near Ammaia. Which disturbed me more with the sheer lack of life (as I knew it). I’ve been writing about that in an essay that’s growing and growing and will perhaps now inspire my next novel.

Somehow the 2,000 year-old evidence of the kind of life that continues notwithstanding the taxi driver’s translation app or my hope for my friend’s cure has registered itself as the cause of all our problems. As usual, more on this later. Meanwhile:

Evergreen

In a hot trodden field where locusts scatter
no snakes left, even lizards sudden shade
taking steps where dust falls before trowel
while tourists park on cool museum screen
before dawn on your side of the world and
on amphitheatre quad tracks
I am trying some Streisand.