Power flexes
downward:

a hulking, indifferent
appendage

obscene in its
obviousness,

but the obviousness is the
point,

you remind
me.

This latest one was only twenty-
six

and seemingly healthy, but no
matter—

in Hokkaido by now the
larches

have all dropped their
needles,

and the fumaroles of Mount
Asahidake

still hiss, even while
covered

in heaps of snow. I wish
that

you could take me there. I
wish

that we could set
off

into that pale oblivion and never
return,

immersed for the rest of our
days

in the frigid, accurate
waters

of Nature’s
reality.

But she has no dominion
here,

you remind
me,

and we are all just tourists in this place
anyhow,

sidling beneath cornices and sidestepping
crevasses

aslope an angry volcano in
winter,

that warm, glowing lodge at its
foot

seemingly never
drawing

any
closer.