The world’s oldest underground mine fire has been burning
6,000 years—
This is in Australia, landscape of opera and barrier reefs, gun
laws. Heat
from the fires, leaving the mine rocky and jagged, the land caved
in like a glorious
indoor pool. Somewhat like this, our differences, yours and mine.
How heat destroys
us into emotional extravagance. How we can’t stop lecturing or rid
ourselves
of outworn values. The black dress I wore to your mother’s funeral,
its secret
underside of orange silk. Heat from the fire, leaving the mine rocky
and jagged—
We keep silent, our private permissions hidden. The veiled fear,
lamps kept lit.
The world’s oldest mine began with a rumble between two things,
lightning strike
or spontaneous combustion, some kind of invisible barter, so the heat
is also
a movement that wants to spring confused canaries abandoned
underground,
wants to quit pacing red borders. The mountain burning through its
energy is a kind
of god-magic unsolved, what keeps us reaching toward the larger—
