From Taos to Gallup and Canyon de Chelly

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You still come to me like a fresh lover

Woman of brown and pale pink

I should have left everything for you

should have gone so deep into your heart

I'd get lost in yellow aspen leaves

stand on the straw of your autumn

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I should never have taken another lover

I should have walked your hills

till my soles burned

till the sky, that old dwarf,

opened its secrets

till someone stopped whispering your name 1,000 miles away

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~ Natalie Goldberg

painting, Abstract at Ghost Ranch,  by the author

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Into this world

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Let us die gracefully into this world

like a leaf pressed in stone

let us go quietly breathing our last breath

let  the sun continue to revolve in its great golden dance

let us leave it be as it is

and not hold on 

not even to the moon

tipped as it will be tonight 

and beckoning wildly in the sea

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~ Natalie Goldberg

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