— St. Louis University, 1967
I guess you could’ve called it a new kind of art project back before there was any such thing as conceptual or performance art the two of us lying on the grass in the middle of the quad me leaning over her like a tree that trails its branches in a stream inhaling like an opium eater who savors each curve and curtsy of smoke and she beneath me, drinking it in like a desert plant who knows the rain may not come again neither of us beautiful but beautifully absorbed until a shadow broke across our day a white-haired Jesuit demanding “Where do you think you are?” sweating like a candle as he told us “You should be ashamed of yourselves” calling us back to what we had abandoned in our rush to be together What did he know of our hunger the exquisite prickle of cut grass Drunken, I raised my head to the beauty in his cruel blue eyes So we left, driven from the garden He would never lose his anger while our love would soon be gone
