Thunder walks away on carpet slippers,
wet leaves cockle and whisper.
A backwash of sound lingers,
a rustling of mulch
as if a mouse were nibbling a bible.
"I want to search for the perfect mountain,"
you say, lying beside me in the dark.
You don't mean a real mountain.
I don't know what you mean.
The rain ends at dusk,
but the sodden sky keeps falling,
it splashes where your body,
is deep and deafened.
This thing I am doing with myself;
I have seen horses do -
nostrils full of shock and rage,
a question funneled through
foaming arteries.
That night I dream of hammers on pitons,
the clicking of carabiner;
your hands grasping my features
struggling to climb above me.
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