The mountain is flat and blue now
with California smoke
it is not a mountain anymore
it is now an idea of the shape
of the memory
of a dream
of a mountain
when you woke in the middle of the night
it was green and buzzing with
dragonflies and smelled of wetness
but you were too tired to write it down
and in the morning all you remember
is this construction paper cutout
of a dream of a mountain
There must be nothing inside it
you think
You know that if you go there
and place your hand on its
two-dimensional surface
it would give like paper
with nothing behind it
but you go there
and you walk up the trail
and there are flowers
and you’re surprised
and dragonflies upside down in the air
and bees drunk in towers of lupine
and little yellow birds splashing about in sagebrush
as if it were water
and from there
you look out on all the half-remembered dreams
of flat, blue mountains to the west
where the sun is setting red
and think
how successfully the smoke
blots out the life that may exist
in future or distance
and how hard it still is for you to believe
each one of them
is an electric, underground circus
like this one
and you think
how unsuccessfully
it halts the life
here and now
and how
that’s going to be the fire’s job