I pretend a knowing of your skin or,
beneath it, the wells of yourself, over the time it took
you here.

Somewhere between silversmith and potter
he demonstrated how he works, with his wheel
pulling the material in and shaving it away into a hole in the center

I sensed you were about to say
Do you know how much I’ve loved you and I said, Oddly yes
but have been baffled as to why

But having braked all the way to the floor of the valley
it dawned on us the slope we’d have to climb
and it was night, you on the back of my bike

These girls riding bareback on their palominos down the slopes
what do they know, I thought

The two or three times I saw Lil Wayne
hanging out at the Praline Connection
in New Orleans he had a mouth full of bling

Returning to the very same place,
let it be a hilltop
with a view of the night city

Climbing the stairs, slowly, on my palms
and soles, bent far forward, I see
my shins closer than usual—

That is where the coal ash is headed, not somewhere
but to you who are farther downstream
than me.

I know that feeling you have: wanting the world,
at last, to yield something, the way liquor does—
an angle, an idea, a color, a deepening.