This is a feast, climbing this hill again,
snapping thorns, rubbing a little blood on my ankle.
I know every tree on the hillside,
every stump and runner.
I lie on my back again like I always do,
stretching my legs out and entering the blue world.
Over my head a 30,000 pound stone sits
supported by a lump of grass and a few flowers.
I draw little figures in the flat spaces
with my round eye, like I always do,
and make the shadows out of the sun’s roots.
This year I do it in memory of Emma Goldman
and the immigration officer who gave her a bouquet of white lilacs
from her trip back to Russia,
and I do it in memory of her fight against property
and I do it in memory of her unprinted speeches.
It doesn’t really matter;
I could do it for Pablo Casals just as well
and the lost Republic,
or Simone de Beauvoir waving goodbye to a deranged America,
the woods are so rich here and the stone so smooth.
I will probably be able to come back ten more years
before it gives way and falls into the river.
Next year I will know for sure if I have to change my mountain;
in the meantime I will learn how to lie down without pain
and I will learn how to let my mind go more and more astray.
    Tonight I am going into Philadelphia to hear two
New York poets sing about the wilderness.
If I grow a little arrogant, or a little sleepy,
it is because of the stone I am lying under
and the river I always drag around behind me.
I reach into my pocket for the small Barlow
I carry with me to remind myself of my own
hatred of captivity
and cut a little at the thick vines that are choking
the life out of these trees.
It is a quiet act which I do out of memory,
having little to do with the injustices of nature
and even less to do with the slaughters - and stupidities - of history.
-Their wilderness is good too, the rat smells
behind the Jewish bakery, the Norwegian birches in the hallway,
the sea shells floating in the windows.
    It is good to have a high place to come back to.
It is good to be able to separate yourself
from the man sleeping beside the dogwoods
and the ladies with buckets digging up jack-in-the-puplit
and pulling wild columbine out of the rock face.
This has to be the last week the poison
will let me lie here on the ground
without running violently through my skin.
I throw a tender look at Emma Goldman
bending over my face to show mercy.
I reach up with long horrified fingers
to touch the strings of the sainted cello
and start my slide down the soft dangerous hillside.