He can see the ragged mountains from where he sits, their edges like torn paper. Their trails are hidden, but he remembers them, their inclinations and slender switchbacks, the incredulous silence when the wind ebbed,
the curve of her hip as she lay in one of the sudden clearings. The way she scooped water from the streams
in her hands, so full of casual ritual.

It is early morning, so he knows she is on one of the paths, halfway between her cabin and one of the springs. She had constructed a liturgy from the forest’s whims, He remembers the way the edge of the trail crumbled under his feet, the constellation of clouds that watched him as he fell, how lucky he had felt that he only broke his back.

Her trips down the mountain, to see him, became briefer, the space between longer, until the last day he had seen her, and she told him plainly: she could not love that which she knew would die. She went back up into the mountains, with their everlasting life. There was no violence in him, but he prays for vengeance, for the rugged ways to be made smooth, for a consuming fire.

On our way from Sacramento to San Diego,
the car quit on us, politely giving 10 miles
of stuttering, coughing notice.
I couldn’t be angry with it: midsummer,
heat rising from the ground in waves,
the earth itself boiling away.
Any sane thing would give up on working today.

We each stared at the engine block in turn, blankly, expectantly,
as if waiting for some curtain to be drawn back
or to be possessed by some fit of understanding.

The only thing I could understand was the heat,
the violence of it, an almost audible roar.
we decided to abandon the car and walk to the nearest town.
We crushed through some broken glass on the shoulder.

I could feel the shards collapsing,
even through my shoes. I imagined being barefoot,
shuddered at my own fragility.
Last night’s dream sprung in my mind like a trap.
I stood on a balcony, looking out on darkness.
The night evaporated quickly, rushing over the horizon
as dawn arrived, the day bursting in, fully formed.

There were whole pieces of flesh missing from the earth,
rectangular chunks simply cut out and removed, gashes filling
with lava, water, oil; tectonic entrails.

The sun kept rising, like a guillotine, deliberately
yet not slowly. I stood there at the balcony for centuries,
watched the wounds ferment and sour, then scab,
seal the holes like painted plaster.

When we arrived in the next town, clothes soaked in patches
throats coated in dust, I waited awhile before drinking in
the air conditioning and piped water,
paused to savor the thirst and soreness in the heels of my feet.
I could still feel the glass under my feet,
the remains of someone’s mistakes
like a threat made, or a warning given.

She paints, and I watch her.
The quickness of her brushstroke makes me nervous,
afraid that the painting will unravel
under her recklessness. She laughs,
she wonders why I think slowness means care,
asks what I make of the ambulance,
or the mother’s quick breath and push.

My usual answer to a question I cannot answer is a laugh
the brush never stops scraping and diving, singing the canvas,
cajoling; the coax, the whisper, the hard sell,
call and response between palette and easel,
both quivering and trembling with the force of it.

So I laugh, I remember God with all that time on his hands,
taking half a day to make his own image, from some dirt and a taken breath.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this house,
or even thought of it. All its shadows lie familar,
the maps I made in my childhood still read true.
But the grass is too high, and brown, yet somehow
still sprouting seeds. The windows are unnaturally bare,
the house rests too lightly, insubstantial.

It is more than quiet, and the detritus of someone else’s life
lies in a makeshift pyre on the sidewalk spilling into the gutter
like an offering to the usual gods, those that are veiled and mute.

The tree in the center of the yard, I know.
it stands, shorn of leaves and blindly defiant,
branches patterning the sky like capillaries.
Ants have died in the slow currents of its sap.
I can see its roots flexing and curling
under the skin of earth and slabs of concrete.

I smell a wet stench, hazy and rotting.
The fridge was not emptied before being set on the pile,
and the air is engorged with it.

The house has softened its proud, complicated edges
with each changing of hands. I imagine it ceased being a home
long ago, carved into currency, sanded down to a bet.
For a second, I consider looking through the windows
to see the corners and walls, to try reconstruct the inner landscapes
from the riddled, creased blueprints of my memory.

But it seems rude somehow, like commisserating with a new widow.
It’s simpler, anyway, and I can see what is to be seen from here.
The familiar shadows have lengthened and matured since I arrived.

When I was seven or eight, I developed a chronic cold,
perpetually dripping from my eyes and nose.
The doctor consulted his oracles, conducted a ritual;
I was allergic to the tree and the grass of my yard.
I felt that betrayal fall full upon me,
bruise my uncalloused trust, wished the tree a stump,

the lawn full of rocks. The curse went awry,
as the prophecies of children often do.