would it be that apricot (capitol reef)
		------------------------------------------------------------

		would it be that some apricot in capitol reef
		national park...  would it be that it grew fruit.
		for me to pick it.

		would it be that the fremont-pecked stone sheep
		lodged improbably high over the jabbering fremont river
		would it be that i could hope to touch it.

		would it be that the board game -- what's its name? --
		the one with 4 colors and a race around the greek
		cross-shaped board -- would it be that i could
		again play it.

		there in the shade of sage and huge and well-fed
		native cottonwoods and smaller, luckier, mormon-brought
		and pampered orchards, played a comely woman and a younger
		comlier teen girl -- on a curb -- smooth long weave of
		four legs breaking symmetry from shade into sunlit tarmac.

		would it be that i could walk right into their lives
		right into right in right inside -- and fit like rain.

		would it be that i did not work on location
		so far away
		in a lovely city -- but a city nonetheless --- having
		to crumb and piece two weeks of away
		once every blue moon.

		would it be that i could live in utah and
		maybe marry a utahan in utah.
		yes.  marry -- but not on any church's terms.

		would it be that the apricot trees of capitol reef
		and its towering "sleeping rainbows" -- apricot-colored
		sandstone sheer walls of highly textured cliffs, in
		navajo -- would it be that they could grow familiar
		familial.

		we were standing in apricot-sunlight near the end of
		daylight at the foot of the world-famous display:

		that puzzling sequence of trapezoidal-bodied men with
		horns on square heads and a pack of dadaist dogs sheep
		and deer and many crossed circles and serpents.

		and the shy frenchman came.  to us just us and attempted
		to say -- what? -- it took therese a moment to figure out.

		and this is what he meant:  would it be that you could see
		what i have seen and thus warm me.  i care for your lives
		and i am

		raining.


			Marek Lugowski
			5 August 1995
			Chicago, Illinois (& Capitol Reef National Park, Utah)


P.s.  This poem is dedicated to Natalie in whose honor I acquired an apricot
      colored shower curtain.  I swear it worked out that way.  The only ones
      left in the store.  Despite my worst fears, it actually looks lovely,
      glowing softly, in my bathroom's last gleamin', all new and wrinkled,
      slightly evocative of the sensuous, as well as hinting at the warmth
      of adobe, and of course, the Sleeping Rainbows.  And only $2.98.