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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They scatter across the plain like news spreading
\nedge the far, high ridges
\nsentinels flaunting yellow against cloudless blue sky
\nyellow beside red-brown cows grazing
\nyellow hover above tough, bleached weeds
\nthat crawled and claimed these dry hills
\nlong before staunch umbrellas stood contented<\/p>\n
They spill down steep gullies
\nfurrowed as a bulldog’s brow
\noutline how the land laps back against itself
\nin great soft folds of earth-flesh,
\ngather in small clutches
\nor stand, stunned, alone
\neach one solitary
\nyet communal,
\nthey cue up along the roads
\nloiter at intersections
\npose straight on for all the cameras,
\ngoldenrod silk ripples with the wind
\nshimmers in the desert sun
\ndrapes the ground with shadows
\nof loose grace
\nlike cast-off clothing<\/p>\n
The close ones loom over us
\narc bright arms in welcome
\nwe sit and lie in the shelter
\nof familiar shapes made stately
\nwe, too, feel enlarged
\nby their brief reign
\nsurrounded
\nwith the \u00a0float of silent song
\nthe joyous sheen
\nof lunacies benign<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Christo’s Yellow Umbrellas” was published in the anthology\u00a0A Sense of Place<\/em>, Saturday Afternoon Press, Los Angeles, 1993.
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