West Mountain Epilogue

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.