Heavy August, Long March

I thought today about climbing the mountain of porcelain 

The one that sits on the edge of town, not too far, bicycling-distance

You can crawl up it like an angry child until your legs bleed 

And your hands are chalk-white; drag them down past the root

To bring two together, medicinal pink, cameo-jewelry color

Or, before returning home, gather up a shard and ask: 

“What is it? Whose are you?”

Then stumble down the far side humiliated 

Because, of course, no answer comes

When the old wound yawns wide, years later

What you must make with yourself is not so much an arrangement,

More like a yellow page, folded up

Where two waxy sailors have been keeping score

Ensuring that everything young and sharp pays out through the lungs

A toll, to everything whole and hard that came before

I thought today about returning to the deep hills

Where we stood, bent back, as the sky tore into ribbons 

That night, over my shoulder, I saw a cat burning and speaking

The way bushes burn and speak, saying over and over

“On fire, mine, on fire, mine”

You didn’t hear it, but I nodded at the time, taking its meaning:

Everything you think is yours is already on fire

Everything I’ve thought of burning is already mine

When thought clings round dead limbs, tightening its lusts and luxuries

What bursts out of your sockets is no feast, no reflection, no basement bulb

Just something that presses up against you at dusk on Sundays

Harder than the last time you felt it, well-executed and irrefutable

Much like that, a ring is always harder than an open question

And two–two is terrifying:

What is it? On fire, on fire.

Whose are you? Mine, mine.