Mountain Goats Going To Alaska
The jacaranda are wet with color,
and the heat is a great paint brush, lending color to
our lives,
and to the air, and to out faces; but I'm going to
Alaska
where there's snow to suck the sound out from the air.
Up, yes, in the branches,
the purple blossoms, go pale at the edges;
there is meaning in the shifting of the sap, and I see
in them traces
of last year, but then they hadn't grown so strong,
and their limbs were more like wires. Now they are
cables.
thick and alive with alien electricity, and I am going
to Alaska,
where you can go blind just by looking at the ground,
where fat is eaten by itself
just to keep the body warm.
Because from where we are now, it seems, really,
that everything is growing in a thousand different
ways;
that the soil is soaked through with old blood and with
relatives
who were buried here, or close to here, and they are
giving rise
to what is happening. Or can you tell me otherwise?
I am going to Alaska, where the animals can kill you,
but they do so in silence, as though if no-one hears
them,
then it really won't matter. I am going to Alaska.
They tell me that it's perfect for my purposes.