From a rocky outcrop, Pegasus Mountain

Somebody smoked

here,

the dead butt on the rocky outcrop

 

with the view of Lingyin Temple,

its muddy        gold

four hundred feet

below,

 

the same colour

as my copy of Pictures…

                                    the gone world returned

in a certain shade of copper.

 

The eight-hundred steps

would have been harder        for a person

nursing a bad habit.

I counted them

in Chinese

and doubled their length and the way

they tasted in my mouth. Rose to bile

I swallowed like pride sitting then

on the mountainside

with Lawrence we counted together

both    untitled           untethered.

 

At the four-hundredth step a couple picked seeds

and arranged them like good fortunes

making midday shadows small on the stone.

They heard

my breathing before they

saw me.

 

Greetings filled a vacuum entirely natural,

two birds

were quiet on approach and sang after the fact;

I heard them

from a mile away,

maybe more, responses

to the sound

of the stray cat

coming down.

The View and You, Lingguan Temple

Climbing the hill became an act
of self-definition, as if I rewrote myself
like rough translation on a steady incline,
made marks on trees to chart progress,

the other characters which scarred
bamboo stalks told tales of similar ascents.
The echo in the cavern at the midway point
ricocheted back along a decade.

I played ping pong sounds
With a chalk wall opposite.
I looked deep into the dark
and saw an outline of a man.

The climb to the temple shrine was justified
by the view over XiHu, sprawled beyond
and below the forest, the morning starting point
a speck to mark distance with rapid breaths.

You would not believe the lightness
of the air. You would not believe,
and I would not believe had I not
lost half a body along the way.

I tried to find words I could send
during a similarly quiet moment
when back amongst the concrete
jungle and found only one.

Strange, to raise a son
and then watch him leave, to rise
from the tarmac and then to climb the hill
and compose poems about leaving.

There are things I regret:
the belated birthday text;
the flight that split a holiday,
the way I raised my voice in the years before it fell away.

I stood upon the peak red faced
like Lingguan wang, knowing that
there was a right way and there was
a wrong way to seize the day.

I always needed time, rewind,
and if there are thirty-six heavens
then I start a two-person petition
to add the summer of 2007.

We climbed Langdale Pike
and from the top of the world
I closed my eyes and opened them
to a sublime sense of suspension.

Somebody caught me on the way down;
I recall that it was you.