All day the soot-rain fell and slantwise,
coal dust pouring through a purple scrim
above the city in its August steam,
its redbrick buildings with their broken teeth
and warehouse wings,
white plastic trash beside the sidewalks,
ghost-bags lifted into swirls
as trains dragged slowly through the center,
axles turning in the roundhouse,
in the weedy rail yard where the rooftops
hummed in drizzle like a silent migraine
in the damp hot drowse.
I was in my room, not in my room
but talking back to talk inside my head
in passing phrases,
reading to myself and writing to myself.
Go! said the blue jay. Go now. Go!
And so I walked toward West Mountain, miles away.
I climbed throughout that afternoon
in rain that wept my eyes and cooled my forehead.
Climbed on slippery gray stones,
on weed-skim, shelves of slate, black moss
beside a creek that foamed and gargled
as the banks spilled over.
I was on all fours
and clambering through alder-damp,
through vetch, feeling my way
toward a lookout near the first high peak,
where someone told me Indians had graves
and white men, too.
in all-souls clashing, found I half-believed
in all-souls clashing, found
red jasper arrowheads beside the creek
but didn’t keep them, didn’t want to think
about that fury, the unburied past.
The city lay behind me under mist,
a cindery gray spread.
I couldn’t see it from the ledge when I looked back.
But don’t look back, I said, keep saying,
as the long goodbye goes on and on.
I made it to the other side that day:
walked, crawled, and slid—a snail at times
on my slim ass, my pearly sled. And found my footing
on a slow descent toward the edge of it,
a further ripple in the westward ho,
as I kept walking, sometimes
hacking my way through
a tangle of old-growth,
day after day. And once I paused
beside a burning bush of sunlight,
where a voice said yes I am.
And then a rainbow spread before me,
and I heard the feet of many pilgrims,
and knew I’d left that Lackawanna light
forever and for good. I knew I’d walk
into the wilderness of dark green mountains,
settle into soft leaves, mulch, moraine,
then sleep to wake beside a curling stream
as dawn-light beckoned
by a gusty, wet-black road,
not looking back but not forgetting
where I’d been and how I’d been—
that hard coal city in its carbon steam.