Through the mist-aproned mountain,

wind blows a gate open. 
Years that don’t belong to me

flood my palms like coins too heavy

to hold. Memories—time’s avalanche

sweeping the mountainside of the mind. 
In my naked namelessness, I lie down

in the spring snow. The contours of my senses

dissolve in the coldness

like sugar on a fevered tongue.
Slowly, the wind in the mountain assumes

the gate’s unwanted shape

the way a soul first tries on a body: testing

its limits before suffusing it, before

surrendering itself wholly to a fixed form. 
I miss not having a body, or rather

that illusion of absolute freedom,

of not having to indulge

the body’s stringent longings.
What is nostalgia if not the oldest hunger

you can no longer return to—that sliver

of clear sky that each falling flake of snow

holds within, unwounded by masts or wings?
The wind tries to close the gate

but the gate refuses closure.
A pain, when touched, shines in the dark.
The wind is no longer what it was.
The mountain remains the mountain.