Concerning the Afterlife, the Indians of Central California Had Only the Dimmest Notions by Robert Hass It is morning because the sun has risen. I wake slowly in the early heat, pick berries from the thorny vines. They are deep red, sugar-heavy, fuzzed with dust. The eucalyptus casts a feathered shadow on the house which gradually withdraws. After breakfast you will swim and I am going to read that hard man Thomas Hobbes on the causes of the English civil wars. There are no women in his world, Hobbes, brothers fighting brothers over goods. I see you in the later afternoon Your hair dry-yellow, plaited from the waves, a faint salt sheen across your belly and along your arms. The kids bring from the sea intricate calcium gifts— black turbans, angular green whelks, the whorled opalescent unicorn. We may or may not feel some irritation at the dinner hour. The first stars, and after dark Vega hangs in the lyre, the Dipper tilts above the hill. Traveling in Europe Hobbes was haunted by motion. Sailing or riding, he was suddenly aware That all things move. We will lie down, finally, in our heaviness and touch and drift toward morning. "Concerning the Afterlife, the Indians of Central California Had Only the Dimmest Notions" by Robert Hass, from Field Guide. © Yale University Press, 1973. Reprinted with permission.