Root and sky,
I am a translator.
I possess sanctuary, the word;
looking for its missing parent
the shadow of a weary family
dwells on the sinister face of the mountain.
Clouds have regained their stolen opacity.
The sun is a perfect circle
and silence.
Hoof and wing,
the height where space travel becomes animal instinct.
The theory of constellations:
take a cosmic razor
to the horizon,
where the spoils of day,
free from the body,
–a word with no origin–
survive after dark in a dissolving blue
Unforgive, tear; skim the eye.
The star is not here to save you
yet;
it is merely the best burning
that exists outside the body.
A green fierce fights life for its life on this peak,
and a red ribbon, easy to fray, makes a case for restraint:
delicacy is what it takes to protect delicacy
What is a stone to the tower?
Heat to a fallen log?
My skin smells like it’s just dried
from jumping in a lake.
Our rainwater intellect:
petrichor? promontory?
peak, peak, peak
It’s cold up here—
I can’t say what the moon does—
the mountain
cannot achieve,
triumphant gravesite belonging to no one.
I’m seeing the world, scarcely a thousand words
to give for one gradient of rock,
a carcass,
a quest,
my dilating sense of grand.
I start eating the grass.
Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash
