Seen on this platform you might be any father
With his daughter a wary wife
A family protected from chill by vivid jackets
Below brimstone bubbles rise in snowmelt
Remind of the cowboy who broke through crust
And boiled his leg

But leaning on the safety rail
You feel you might just trade your life for his
As you see again through rising mist
Ephemeral skin glimpse of unbuttoned blouse
Imagine your tongue slipping in
Your stare is hard as diamond

As long as there’s fire water wind
Rags of steam will rise and whip
This thing that’s been gnawing at you
For the time it takes a dog to live convulse and die


If you could go back reshape that night
Smile and gently lift her hand away you’d go
To live it again

That spring adrift
Staying with a shipmate in Seattle
You help his sister get dinner plates
Crouch with her near a cabinet
Where she puts the palm of her hand on your inner thigh
Well above the knee leaves it there
You leave it there

After dinner during a board game
Her fiery toenails play up your calf
Sure you’re only twenty but she’s twelve

And you crave the danger
Embrace the nausea when they order you to leave
Even—years later—insight
Into how she must have got that way

Schoolgirls in the stacks women in waiting rooms midget when you can find one
skeleton with a tongue that defective girl wild in the cage in a car

you offer yourself

Now slugged with the weight of a hundred felonies
You begin the long climb out on the narrow trail
Other tourists coming down (your family up ahead)
Ever polite you stand aside
At a step along the slope
Young tanned thighs
Come level with your face