This page contains the first exchange of e-mail poems between Steve and me. These poems got the whole ball rolling.

Wondering if Steve would be able to go to our regular figure drawing session that week, I sent him the following poem in an e-mail:

Mentally you caress
the curvaceous slopes and
hidden crevices,
the rounded hillocks and
dangling fruits.

Gently you scrape
the chalk:
lines, shades, spaces.
Slowly the landscape
materializes on your page.

Later you sip ciders
with fellow artists,
and discuss mountain climbing,
hiking through forests,
spelunking.

Steve replied with the following:

but spelunking
caught in the depths
of the planets cold velvet womb
unable to exercise my will

like the seductive glance
of so many possibilities
and I must choose but one
to be the sane journier

but who's to care
for life is short
and the earth is not diminished at all
with the loss of just one day

like a stallion, well rested
not wanting to hold back anything
we greet the evening
with our paper fantasies

Not sure whether Steve's reply was a general statement on our drawing excursions, or whether he actually could go that evening, I sent him another poem:

There is a secret place
somewhere north of here
where soft-skinned maidens
shed their robes
and step into the light.

In this magic place
the maidens move not limb
nor make a sound,
and I am wondering
will we be there tonight?

Steve replied:

let us hope they are maidens
and fair ones at that
for tis harder on the eye
to sketch and watch the masculine form

onward I say, to the sacred space
where all falseness falls away
and we confront those many
who have passed before us

my stallion consumes unleaded
and does not sweat
she gallops tonight

I now knew that Steve wanted to go drawing, but unfortunately, I still didn't know whether he'd be able to pick me up and if so, when to expect him at my house. So I sent him more poem:

What time, what time,
will your stallion ride?
Will he pass nearby my house?
Will he pause long enough
and bend his knees
so that I may alight.

With pencils and pens,
crayons and chalk,
securely in one hand,
I'll hold with the other
my fluttering pad
as we ride into the night.

Steve's reply:

Into the night
the horsemen rode
on stallions white
in the moonlight shown

over dusty hill
into the shimmering disk
of the suns rays
captured in the mist
of the crashing waves

but in their haste
their sharp eyes did not catch
the loose materials of their art
and along the road of the town they ran
two horsemen on creatures of magic identity

the citizens in the roadside cafes
thought it more performance art
seeing horses powdered veridian blue
striped with flowing streams of pale orange, and red,
whose drops mixed with specks of light green,
cast from a leaking tube
in the red shine of the setting sun.

As the clock cast down its vainglorious face
ringing seven as the hour of the arrival,
the team uniting only 15 minutes before.