This is a similar kind of poem.
I spent a weekend in a condo in North Carolina.
And I was on the seventh floor of the building.
There was a hot tub outside the room.
All night, you would hear the jets of gas flame firing
up to heat the water, to keep it at a perfect 102 degrees
for that moment of whim, when the people staying
in the apartment might want to immerse their bodies for five
minutes.
The water is kept 24 hours a day at that temperature.
It wouldn't have been a problem if it hadn't been so loud.
You know, the noise of those jets firing
on, it kept reminding you of how wasteful you were being.
Really interfered with your pleasure.
And that's what this is about.
It's called "From This Height."
Cold wind comes out of the white hills
and rubs itself against the walls of the condominium
with an esophageal vowel sound.
And the loneliness creeps into the conversation
by the hot tub.
We don't deserve pleasure, just as we don't deserve pain.
But it's pure sorcery the way the feathers of warm mist
keep rising from the surface of the water
to wrap themselves around a sculpted clavicle or wrist.
It's not just that we are on the eighth story
of the world looking out through glass and steel
with a clarity of vision, in which
imported coffee and the knowledge of French painting
are combined, but that we are on top
of a pyramid of all the facts that make this possible.
The furnace that heats the water, the truck that
hauled the fuel, the artery of highway
blasted through the mountains, the heart attack
of the previous owner, the history of Western medicine
which failed to save him.
The successful development of tourism and Snow White
lotions, which counteract the chemistry of chlorine
upon skin--
our skin.
Down inside history's body, the slaves
are still singing in the dark.
The roads continue to be built. The wind blows.
And the building grips itself in anticipation
of the next strong gust.
So an enormous act of forgetting is required simply
to kiss someone or to open your mouth
for the fork of high-calorie pate someone
is raising to your lips, which, considering the price,
would be a sin not to enjoy.
Thank you.