"As surely as the world did, / mountain after mountain"

It's goats, you see, or may be.

Is there something that

floats atop rocks, straddles

down on the breeze? There's no

need to pretend I can't see:

them, you, this

hillbilly robe I've

grown accustomed to, like a

tree's leeward mold, the

fray and all day of these slippers, my hair, I'll

point this bony finger at you: undo the

green medicine walls, mosquito squeak of wheelchair and

despair in ammoniac halls. A mountain

range of memory I can no longer climb. It's my

ankles, you see, the life-

span of a shower, sit and drift like snowfall. I

take a deep breath of almost not quite air,

so high the sky black as can be, up there; so tall.

(Edited 21 June 2009, begun 31 May 2009. After D. Nurske, "A Marriage in the Dolomites". A friend prefers character development; she can do it, plus plot. My own writing has started with phrases -- sometimes others', as here, sometimes mine -- and pursues implicit rhythms and that feeling that an image may tell a story better than the story tells itself.)