I hear your eyes are as blue as certain pools hidden in the
mountains of Southern Russia, where old men drink blue vodka and
dance on their toes, where old women still card wool and young
women loose their long hair that the cold northern winds might fan
it out to weave around them.

I hear there is a door in the bottom of your soul, and that
sometimes you so gather yourself that you might drop back
through to stand naked in silver fountains where you sing to
gathering birds and other angels.

I hear that your hair is as yellow as wheat in the black hills
of the Dakotas and that your soul has two rooms, one gold as
your hair and one black as velvet on a casket. I've been told
that when you pass from the gold room into the black you carry
two luminous pearls in your right hand and that when you pass
from the black to the gold you carry two ebony seeds in your left.

I wonder what you would do if God asked you to leave the world
and tend sheep in the Pyrenees until stars dropped from the
skies so that you might learn the holy language of birds and
sheep, brooks and breezes until you might, at last, as winter
turns your summer gold hair white, write one poem that would live
forever in the hearts of mankind?

And what if Christ just once, and ever so briefly, touched the
free, soft places of your core with his fingers of fire and
caught your eyes with His in an eternal embrace? Would you then
run away from your beloved wild birds and deer down to
orphanages, death houses, and other holy churches of encounter
just to gaze at His eyes once more in theirs?