In Memory of the Mountain

Someday I'll wake

and return to my own skin

shut out of some mortal treason

catching glimpses of my hands

the violent child of the moon

ensnared in rarefied mist

I still hear you in the sound

of whetting knives

in the bellow of airplanes

in old radios buzzing and cracking

I can still see you in mother's shadow

changing hands at the back of the room

Someday you'll lend me your sword

with a flicker of forgiveness

for the standoff of my own storms

being gralloched by loss

the wind murmurs through clay bells

as grief moves only for love

as the bleary days slosh together

It's so close to the side of that sound

Someday I'll fly

into the swirl of the star-flooded plenum

a hopeful heart-torch dwindling

& I will mistake these aging hands

for the bomb-white etch of skeletal wings

I'll carry your dreams over the mountains

the weight our words on my back

syllables of old fires simmering in the swales

I'll build the old house out of our memories

knowing that it will burn

In the luminous fluid of the atmosphere

my body will fissure and flake

and I'll listen

finally, I'll listen

an anxious and lowly animal

learning the meaning

of escape