north of the farm in the Malibu hills (click on the photo above for a large view)

A Few Miles from the Sea, A Dream is Born
She bought herself an acre a few miles from the sea, flanked by a mountain which rose stark like a sudden verb out of the dried up sea bed.  Three or four houses bravely nested like pearls in the bottom of the swell,  and so there was always suspense in that direction.


in the farm kitchen and in the stable preparing for a morning ride

When she looked out her kitchen window there was the verb 'impending.' - scared her at first,  and then on the second look at the house,  it became suddenly beautiful.  How could she have not seen it before? Who would find the pearl,  and what Neptune ruled that still molten brow of earth? The wild early settlers of Malibu,  with their tie-dye and their Bugler, their ghosts ran through the canyon at night,  singing 'Tales of Aphrodite' in Moccasin whispers. 


Rickie on the trail, and Lee rides up Lobo Canyon Road, with this comment: "this Rocky is as smooth as silk!"

A creek ran through the back of the land, and flooded in the hundred year floods that came very five, and then dried up dusty like an old women. There was a nice barn, with a loud roof, seemed to decode messages in the rain, and the horses came, one by one, until, by fall, she was there; the frosted pumpkins, the horses dry in their stalls. Even her daughter knew a cinch from a stirrup, and her smile told you so. Like men who know all the different kinds of nails, or dirts, or women who know all the different kinds of butterflies, or high heels, smiles that people who are burdened with knowledge used for practical reasons.

Morning kiss and the Rockies look forward to a morning outing that is already announced by the rooster

This beauty of having survived, this glory, that was just a days work on the little farm. It knew glory like a sparrow knows heaven. She had recognized that even in the curve before she saw the little house. Out of date, pink, the driveway reached out to the east,  and she caught it,  and she pulled in, and then just like that,  life was new again.
 
RICKIE LEE JONES

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