gold

in the town of my silver teeth
a train arrives at midnight full
of the coal miners
who once dug each day 
in the mountain's throat
for fire rocks. i am a fire rock
or else i am the mine or else
i am their hands. the hunger
that flames have for memory.
they ask "where were we human?"
lately i have been craving 
that loneliness. how on any given afternoon
i could decide to blow my heart up
like a balloon & dangle it on a string
above the lehigh river. 
the coal miners would work 
& ask, "would you like to join us?"
i always explained, "i am a poet
which means i am a witness." 
still, there were days i kneeled.
wielded the pix axe & cut my knuckles
on black rock. where should we go
when we have no more finger prints?
my favorite part of that year
living alone in the mountains 
was the afternoon. it arrive with nothing
at all in its mouth. i found 
so many bones. the night was 
painful though. waiting again
for the miners & the train. 
feeling the ghosts stir around me
& wondering if i was one of them.
wondering even deeper then
if i wanted to be 
one of them. then at least
i would have a vocation.
they know to come to the mountain
& the mountain aches 
to be undone by them in the way
we come to crave our own unraveling. 
i lost so many bones. boredom 
& wayward loves & plucked eye lashes.
some of them still 
at the bottom of the river.
headlight of the great steam engine 
rippling like a drowned moon
in the water.