At night there were lines of fire along its mid-horizon.
Morning & then in the evening, it was moving around, with the others.

The third voice—  behind my right shoulder, & all the way back—  said,

‘Do not think that this is sad.
 It is not sad. Even sadness is not sad.’

On the zinc roof of the little white house, whitewashed cinder block & mortar—
with the evening goats down in the dirt yard, chewing on their tongues—
I was real fucked up.

It felt just like I imagined, to be rejected by the past.

One of my teachers says, You must dislodge a deep hiddenness. The sky was opening for Orion,
across the valley, over the mountains. The standing out mountain drew in its own dark blue energy.

My grief was humiliating.     The walking state of having climbed out.

Have you ever questioned trauma, asks a friend?     Yes, I say. No one doesn’t live there.

I rolled the pale tobacco in fine white paper on the roof. The blue gums across the barbed wire were rustling in their rows.

My friend had died, his head in my arms & my lap,
in the glass & the gravel, & yellow grass, on the edge of the road.
On the backs of our necks & sun. Plenty of people were shouting.

On the zinc roof, what felt a long time later, as the moon came up on the mountain to follow Orion—

The Wounded Healer stepped forward, from the night sky memory palace.

Like the third voice like my teacher like my friend—  he was wanting to impart tone
to my body. Tonify. A very particular flutter. I cannot be a person, was my weeping.
The tone, very clear, was, Comply, comply, comply.