Waiting on the stairs of The Mizpah Missionary Home on
Summit Avenue, the children of apostles played with
neighborhood kids and sometimes spread the gospel, warming

We all have seen it.
In the slide show he gives each summer.
There he is! (or There you are!) someone will say

A deer!—nibbling on the few green things
that grow in my strawy meadow.
Mine, we say here: my studio, my meadow, my road.

 Whatever the great religions offer
it is afterlife their people want:
Heaven, Paradise, higher reincarnations,

I rented an atelier attached to the flat
of a fading French film star, Marie-Claire—
who sighed, shaking out her trademark titian hair,

The sky is desert blue,
Like the pool. Secluded.
No swimmers here. No smog—

He rode “no hands,” speeding
headlong down the hill near
our house, his arms extended,

My mother was born in a country
whose name I can’t pronounce.
Sometimes she forgets my birthday,

flying into the air
exhilarated and
scared shitless

Jill tells me about the
show she is making